Church of the Churchless

Science says religion isn't so much wrong, as it is unnecessary

Thanks to fading highlighting, I've been re-reading theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder's book, Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions. 

I bought the book a few years ago and wrote several blog posts about it. (See here, here, here, here, and here.) Then I put the book aside and turned my attention to other books in my morning pre-meditation reading.

When I picked it up again recently, I noticed that I hadn't read a couple of the final chapters. I also saw that my yellow highlighting had faded considerably. To most people, that wouldn't be a big deal. But I'm a habitual highlighter of nonfiction books. It bugged me to have my highlighting of what I considered the most significant passages to be on the verge of disappearing.

So I started to re-highlight my old highlighting, this time with a brighter fluorescent highlighter. But as I did this, I recalled how much I'd enjoyed Hossenfelder's book and decided to re-read the initial chapters. 

That led to some additional highlighting of passages that struck me as more significant and interesting this time around. Now I've re-read almost everything I'd read before, and am glad that I did. I love books about modern science that are not only well-written, but have a certain pleasing edge to them, which this one does.

Hossenfelder frequently refers to something as unscientific or ascientific. These words point to a hypothesis that science has nothing to say about, since it isn't needed to explain anything about our world and the universe at large.

Here's a quote that I shared in one of my previous posts about the book, "Here's what makes something scientific or ascientific."

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

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

 

Hossenfelder, not surprisingly, given her background in theoretical physics, is big on quantifiable mathematics. But I think this sentence from the quotation above makes sense even with the "quantifiable" omitted: However, the God hypothesis has no explanatory power.

I say this because I can't think of anything that religions teach, or preach, that makes more sense than non-religious explanations of some subject, such as morality, how life arose, where earth's species came from, and such.

While modern physics obviously doesn't embrace any form of religiosity, Hossenfelder points out that speculative hypotheses put forward by some physicists are, like religious tenets, incapable of being proven right or wrong, because they have nothing to do with the world in which we live. She writes:

The key feature of the many-worlds interpretation is that each time a quantum measurement happens, the universe splits, creating what's commonly called a multiverse. 

...Advocates of the many-worlds interpretation believe that all the other universes -- the ones we don't observe -- are as real as ours. But in what sense are they real? Unobservable universes are by definition unnecessary to describe what we observe. Hence, assuming they are real is also unnecessary.

Scientific theories should not contain unnecessary assumptions, for if we allow that, we would also have to allow the assumption that a god made the universe. Such superfluous assumptions aren't wrong. They're just ascientific. The assumption that the additional universes in the many-worlds interpretation are real is one such ascientific assumption.

I must stress that this doesn't mean that the parallel universes of the many-worlds idea are not real. It means that any statement about their reality is ascientific. It is something you can believe or disbelieve, but science tells you nothing -- can tell you nothing -- about what is correct.

I agree with what Hossenfelder says as it pertains to hypotheses such as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Those other universes are believed to have no connection with our own, so there's nothing that can be said about them, absent evidence of some connection in which another universe has an observable effect on ours.

However, when it comes to religious belief in God and the supernatural, I think science can assert more boldly about religious belief being wrong. Religions, after all, speak of God not only creating our universe, but remaining an active force within it through prayers being answered, miracles performed, and so on.

Since there is no demonstrable evidence of God and the supernatural having effects in our world, this means that God and the supernatural are unnecessary to explain how the world works. There's no phenomenon that requires a divine explanation.

Thus to me it seems justified to say that religions are wrong. But if we want to stick with how Hossenfelder views things, we can simply say that religious belief is unnecessary to explain our world and the universe as a whole. 

Religiously-minded people can believe whatever they want. They just can't say that their beliefs are necessary to make sense of the world. 

Lessons for meditation based on psychedelic experience research

As a long-time daily meditator -- I've been doing this for 55 years -- I found an article in the October 2024 issue of Scientific American interesting both for what it says about the use of psychedelics like LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin, and meditation that doesn't involve any psychoactive substance. 

The title of the online version of the article by Gary Stix is provocative: "What Makes a Psychedelic Experience? Not Always a Drug, it Turns Out." I'll share a PDF file of the article for non-subscribers.
Download What Makes a Psychedelic Experience? Not Always a Drug It Turns Out | Scientific American

How could that be? Seemingly a psychedelic experience requires a psychedelic drug. Conversely, doesn't taking a psychedelic drug always result in a psychedelic experience?

Well, from my extensive experience with LSD and mescaline during my college days in the 1960s, I can confidently say that the answer to the second question is no.

As I may have related before on this blog, once I took four college friends to Sequoia National Park in California, as I grew up in Three Rivers, a little town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains that is at the gateway to the park.

We hiked five miles or so to a scenic area away from other people. After spending a night in our sleeping bags, each of us took the same dose of mescaline. I wandered off with a guy who I felt close to. We had a great time walking through the woods, climbing to a scenic granite overlook, marveling at a jet that zoomed past high overhead.

Our psychedelic experience was very different from the three people who stayed where we were camping. Asking how they were doing when we got back to them, they complained, "It was a bummer. We never came on." Meaning, they didn't have any psychedelic experience from the same drug that we'd taken.

The article is an interview with an anesthesiologist. Here's how it starts out:

A debate has long percolated among researchers as to what happens after a person takes a psychedelic drug. The experience may stem at least in part from the placebo effect, which is rooted in the belief that taking psilocybin or ketamine will somehow be transformative.

Boris D. Heifets, an associate professor of anesthesiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has been tackling this question amid his broader laboratory investigations of what exactly happens in mind and brain when someone takes a psychedelic.

How much of their sometimes life-altering experience is chemical or empirical, and how much is mental and subjective? It turns out the effects may consist of a lot more than just a simple biochemical response to a drug activating, say, the brain’s serotonin receptors.

The first question posed to Heifetz was this:

Are we coming any closer to understanding how psychedelics work, including in the context of therapy? Are we closer to using these transfor­mational experiences to treat psychia­tric disorders?

Having been in this field for a while, I still face this inescapable problem of how to study psychedelics. One framework that I find very useful is thinking about it in three categories.

There’s the biochemical drug effect, which involves basic brain biology—chemicals interacting with receptors on cells. That happens whether or not you can “feel” the effect of the drug. Then there is the conscious experience related to changes in sensation and revelatory, hallucinatory and ecstatic feelings. These experiences are closely tied to taking the drug, and usually we think of them as caused by the drug. But it is quite difficult to say whether a lasting change in mood or outlook was a result of the drug—a biochemical effect—or of the trip itself, the experiential effect.

The third factor, then, is all those aspects of the overall drug experience that are independent of the drug or trip, the nondrug factors—what psychologist and psychedelics advocate Timothy Leary called the “set and setting.” How much do your state of mind and the setting in which you take a drug influence the outcome?

This category includes expectations about improvement in, say, your depression, expectations about the experience, the stress level in the environment. It would also include integration: making sense of these intense experiences afterward and integrating them into your life. And it’s useful to put each of these things in its own box because I think each of them is somewhat isolated. The goal is to make each box smaller and smaller, to really deconstruct the pieces.

Heifetz found that when ketamine was given to depressed patients under general anesthesia, which they were getting as part of surgery for medical problems unrelated to their depression, so they didn't have any experience of getting ketamine, this group had their depression markedly reduced. But so did a placebo group that didn't get ketamine, yet went through the same pre-operation interviews and such. 

Heifetz observes:

What I take from that is that these nondrug effects, such as expectations of a particular outcome, are almost certainly present in most psychedelic trials and are independently able to drive a big therapeutic effect.

Now, here's how I see this research applying to meditation. Meditation obviously isn't a drug, but it still changes the brain. Every experience changes the brain, of course. Thinking is neurons firing. Not thinking is neurons not firing, or perhaps other non-thought areas of the brain firing. So meditation has physical effects, just as a psychedelic drug does.

It also seems clear that the expectations of meditators also plays a role in the effect meditation has. For example, if a mantra is given to someone by a respected guru or teacher, there may be a strong expectation that repeating the mantra in meditation will lead to positive experiences. 

If these occur, it is very difficult, if not impossible to separate out the different effects of (1) meditation itself, and (2) expectation itself. Just as people who didn't get ketamine during surgery felt less depressed just by the attention they got from someone else, along with an expectation that the study they were a part of could benefit them, likely followers of a guru or other spiritual teacher feel better just by being part of a like-minded community, regardless of whether they meditate as instructed.

Here's another interesting question and answer:

How does giving an actual psychedelic drug to someone in a clinical trial relate to the three categories you mentioned earlier?

Let’s circle back to this idea that psychedelic transformation could rely on the biochemical effect, the experience of the trip itself or nondrug factors. Our study of ketamine during anesthesia really highlighted the role of nondrug factors such as expectation but didn’t really get at the question of “Is it the drug or the trip?”

To answer that, some of my scientist colleagues are testing “nonpsychedelics,” or nonhallucinogenic psychedelic derivatives, to see whether patients with depression, for example, get better after treatment with a drug that can cause some of the same biochemical changes as a classical psychedelic but doesn’t have a “trip” associated with it. That’s “taking the trip out of the drug.”

But what if you could “take the drug out of the trip,” meaning creating an experience that is reproducible across people that checks many of the same boxes as a classic psychedelic-induced trip but doesn’t actually require the use of a psychedelic molecule? So what, in this context, you provide people with is a profound experience that can even be somewhat standardized so you can study it. And it would be powerful and vivid and revelatory, with a long-lasting impact. Do you get the same effects without a psychedelic?

That would not be definitive evidence. But it would strongly suggest that maybe there’s nothing intrinsically special about the activity of a drug that activates a particular receptor that mediates the effects of psychedelics. What that would do is put front and center the role of human experience in psychological transformation.

So maybe a meditator can benefit from their meditation even if they don't have any sort of profound experience. That would be akin to "taking the trip out of the drug."

And it seems obvious that people can achieve the same experiential benefits that meditation provides by doing things that have nothing to do with meditation, like volunteering at a food bank or concentrating on a jigsaw puzzle. That would be akin to "taking the drug out of the trip."

My cosmic conclusions from the 2024 presidential election

For some reason it's usually easier to draw Gigantic Cosmic Conclusions from big events rather than small ones. It doesn't have to be that way, though "gigantic" and "big" do have an affinity with each other. 

Why does death or a disaster move us to ponder the meaning of it all more readily than loading the dishwasher does? If there are grand principles underlying our human experience of reality, why can't we recognize them in the smallest of events as well as the biggest of events?

Don't know.

Maybe because rare big events grab our attention while everyday small events are so familiar, we pass them by. Regardless, my attention certainly was grabbed by the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump that culminated in Trump's victory last Tuesday.

So here's some Gigantic Cosmic Conclusions that I've drawn from the election. They're rather obvious, which argues for their veracity.

Determinism rules, while unpredictability takes center stage. Prior to the election, people had all kinds of ideas about what would happen. Now there's only one defensible idea: Trump won. There are reasons why this occurred. No one really knows what they are, though theories abound. 

Looking forward, nobody was able to predict in any detail the outcome of the election. Looking backward, after the results were known, lots of people are (retrospective) experts in why Harris lost to Trump. 

So life is uncertain until it isn't. The movement of inanimate entities, like planets orbiting the Sun, can be predicted with great accuracy. How American voters will cast their ballots can be predicted, but not with any sort of guaranteed accuracy.

Thus don't believe anyone who claims to know for sure what will happen next in American politics. The only certainty is that nothing is absolutely certain. When I started loading the dishwasher a little while ago I expected that I'd be able to finish that task.

However, I could have been distracted by a phone call, then forgot to resume what I was doing. Or I could have suffered a heart attack prior to the last glass being placed on the top rack. Life is more predictable than a roulette wheel, but less predictable than an eclipse. 

Ups and downs, actions and reactions, are a basic feature of reality. Constancy isn't part of the cosmic equation. Nothing remains precisely the same for very long. Whether it be the tiniest subatomic phenomenon, the hugest happening in the universe, or everything in between, including presidential elections, change is ubiquitous. 

Consider the results of presidential elections in my lifetime.

In 1948 a Democrat, Truman, was elected. In 1952 and 1956 a Republican, Eisenhower, was elected. In 1960 a Democrat, Kennedy, was elected. In 1964 a Democrat, Johnson, was elected. In 1968 and 1972 a Republican, Nixon, was elected. In 1976 a Democrat, Carter, was elected. In 1980 and 1984 a Republican, Reagan, was elected. In 1988, a Republican, George H.W. Bush, was elected. In 1992 and 1996, a Democrat, Clinton, was elected. In 2ooo and 2004, a Republican, George W. Bush, was elected. In 2008 and 2012 a Democrat, Obama, was elected. In 2016 a Republican, Trump, was elected. In 2020 a Democrat, Biden, was elected. In 2024 a Republican, Trump, was elected. 

American voters bounce back and forth between choosing a Democrat or Republican for president. In the past 76 years, the longest stretch of single party rule was 12 years, 1980-92, when Reagan and the first Bush held the White House as Republicans. And in those 76 years, a Democrat was in the White House for 36 years and a Republican for 40 years. 

Yin and yang. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. Whatever you want to call it, transformations from one state of affairs to another are the normal condition in not only politics, but everything. So if someone isn't happy with how things are now, just wait. They'll change. Eventually. Patience may be required.

(This is the basis of a post I wrote for one of my other blogs, "Fellow Trump opponents, here's what gives me hope.")

We humans don't see reality as it is, but how it appears to us. While I'm a big fan of "objective reality," those words deserve the quotation marks because they're an aspiration, not how things actually are.

This truth is on plain display on a presidential election night, when a split screen will show members of one political party cheering wildly as results favorable to their candidate are announced, while at the same time members of the other political party are dejected at the news that their candidate isn't faring well.

Same numbers. Same results. Very different reactions. This is the mystery, and the glory, of human subjectivity. Even if a group of people are privy to the same information, their personal desires, experiences, wishes, and all that will typically cause them to disagree about what the information means.

I watched Kamala Harris's speeches with admiration, agreeing with almost everything she said. I watched Donald Trump's speeches with disgust, disagreeing with almost everything he said. Others had the opposite reaction, loving Trump and hating Harris.

Each of us is locked into our own way of perceiving reality. Science is a wonderful way that humanity uses to try to break out of that subjective prison, using a variety of methods to arrive at statements about reality that can be agreed upon by most scientists in a particular field.

But even in science, disagreements arise about the same phenomena, the same results, the same observations. Raw sensory data always is interpreted by the human brain. We never see things as they are in themselves, only as our brains lead us to see them.

While diversity of opinions can be annoying when we want other people to agree with us, this is an unavoidable feature of human cognition. And really, who would want it to be any other way? If everybody was just like us, life would be unbelievably boring, a hall of mirrors where our own reflection is the only thing we perceive. 

How am I coping with Trump's victory over Harris? By embracing reality.

Reality is a terrible thing to waste. It's one of our most precious possessions. For when we depart from reality, truth obviously suffers. So does our ability to deal with problems, which to handle appropriately, almost always requires a healthy dose of reality.

Problem is, and I struggle with this often, as almost everybody does, evolution didn't confer upon us the advantage of knowing the world as it is. Rather, evolution through natural selection promotes reproduction of our genes by living long enough to mate and have offspring. 

Sure, that necessitates an ability to know how the world is, since our distant ancestors needed to distinguish the sign of a dangerous animal hiding in brush from a breeze rustling branches. However, the human brain isn't optimized to know how things truly are, but to know how things seem to be as viewed through the lens of our needs and desires.

Ever since Trump announced he was running for president again in the 2024 election, I've been hoping that the Democratic candidate would defeat him. So after Harris became that candidate following Biden's withdrawal from the race, I've looked for reasons to be optimistic about her chances.

I realized that my desire to have her win was affecting my ability to see the presidential contest objectively. One attempt to counter that bias was following election models that use polls and other data to come up with predictions of who will come out on top on November 5, Trump or Harris. In the end, the models basically predicted a 50-50 tossup, so they weren't very helpful.

Yesterday was election day. It turned out badly for Harris. Well before midnight west coast time, it was clear that Trump almost certainly was going to be victorious. That saddened me, as I wrote in a post for my Salem Political Snark blog last night, "Win or (probably) lose, I'm grateful for how Kamala Harris campaigned." 

I started the post out this way:

It's turning out to be a sad night. I started watching the election returns on MSNBC around 5 pm with a lot of optimism. After all, a couple of days ago I wrote a blog post called "Why I expect Harris will beat Trump fairly easily."

For sure, that's not going to happen. I was wrong.

At the moment the New York Times Live Presidential Forecast gives Trump more than a 95% chance of victory. Harris' only option is to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Currently Trump is leading by 3 points in Pennsylvania, 6 points in Michigan, and 4 points in Wisconsin.

The Blue Wall is crumbling. When I wake up tomorrow, likely it will have fallen, and Trump will have been declared the victor.

Which is so depressing, I had trouble writing that last sentence. My daughter is depressed. Friends are depressed. My wife is watching something on TV that isn't the election results. I read an update from a New York Times reporter that said:

The Harris campaign just shut off the sound on the TVs at her watch party and replaced it with music after a guest on CNN said tonight felt "more like 2016 than 2020."

I feel the same way. Once again, a competent, highly qualified woman is poised to be defeated by one of the worst presidents our country has ever suffered under. And Trump has vowed to make his next term in office even nastier. 

When I woke up this morning to a clear Trump win, I was tempted to take a break from political news. I felt a bit like someone who had gotten a fatal cancer diagnosis and wanted to blunt that awareness by doing something, anything, that would distract from the disturbing knowledge. 

Yet there I was in mid-morning, doing my usual stretching exercises in front of the television, switching between MSNBC and CNN, which not surprisingly were focused on yesterday's election. I simply feel better when I'm being exposed to news, even if the news isn't to my liking. 

I'm not sure why. I suspect part of the reason is that my mind is capable of imagining larger problems than are actually occurring. Dread is an emotion that can be paralyzing, since it is about what might happen. I've found that usually it is easier for me to deal with what actually is happening, reality. 

New Scientist and Scientific American are magazines that I keep in the bathroom I use before heading off to bed at night. Yesterday I was pleased to come across an article in the October issue of Scientific American that helped my mood somewhat, "We Can't Turn Away from Reality." I liked the title, which differs in the online version.
Download We’ve Hit Peak Denial. Here’s Why We Can’t Turn Away From Reality | Scientific American

It isn't always easy to embrace reality, which includes both the objective reality that most people agree on, and the subjective reality of how we feel about things. Yet I'm convinced that this is a laudable aspiration -- to know how things truly are, not just how we desire them to be. 

This is how the article ends:

Truth tellers are the Achilles heel of collective denial because they call attention to what’s being ignored. Thus, another playbook tactic is to hush them up, often by painting them as subversives or deviants. And so those who wear masks are ridiculed, scientists reporting on COVID risks are cast as fearmongers, and those with long COVID are dismissed as having anxiety disorders.

Time and again society pressures people not to see, hear or speak about the elephant in the room. To maintain our own peace of mind, we tune out, malign and shoot the messengers because they remind us of what we would rather disregard. Just look at physician Ignaz Semmelweis, environmentalist Rachel Carson, and NFL player and social justice advocate Colin Kaepernick. Indeed, people are regularly punished for being right.

So what do we do about our “ignore more, care less, everything is fine!” era? We need to stop enabling it. We can start by being more attuned to the everyday ways in which we ignore or otherwise fail to engage with troubling events—like that pinch we feel when we know we should click on a concerning headline but instead scroll past it.

We need to work harder to catch ourselves in the act of staying silent or avoiding uncomfortable information and do more real-time course correcting. We need to guard against lowering our standards for normalcy.

When we mentally and emotionally recalibrate to the new normal, we also disassociate from our own humanity. We need to demand that our leaders give the full truth and hold them to account. We must stand up for the silenced and stand with the silence breakers. To counter the new normal’s assault on normalcy, we must double down on our duty to know, to speak up and to remember.

With the election tomorrow, I'm trying to empathize with Trump supporters

Empathy. It's a fine-sounding word. I aspire to it. But it can be damn hard to do when people act like selfish jerks and I'm supposed to look upon their twisted view of reality with empathy. 

That's how I feel about Trump supporters. They cheer on their chosen candidate, a twice-impeached former president, convicted felon, habitual liar, and instigator of a violent attempt to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election that was conducted freely and fairly, which Trump lost.

Of course, that only scratches the surface of Trump's negative qualities and wrongdoing. Yet polls show that almost half of American voters will cast their ballot for him. How they can do this mystifies me. 

Trump has openly said that if he wins, he plans to govern as a "dictator on Day 1." His chief of staff says he is a fascist. His reverence for authoritarians indicates that this is his dream job. Yet I find it difficult to believe that so many of my fellow citizens truly want to elect a Hitler-wanna' be.

I'm definitely not a poster child for empathy. However, on the whole me and my fellow Democrats possess much more empathy than the typical Trump supporter. I say this because Trump exhibits essentially zero concern for anybody other than himself. 

His speeches are full of insults, fear mongering, and demonization of anybody who isn't white, heterosexual, and conservative. Trump makes no attempt to reach out to moderate voters who can't buy in to his Make American Great Again bullshit.

But the audiences at his rallies cheer Trump on when he denigrates anyone and everyone who doesn't fit into his Trumpcentric perspective on the world. Which makes me wonder: are Trump supporters actually so uncaring, or are they the victims of forces beyond their control?

Since I don't believe in free will, I consider that both things are true. They are uncaring, and they're victims.

An article in the October 2024 issue of Scientific American, "The Empathy Incentive," gives some clues as to how this comes about. The online title is: "Being Empathetic is Easier When Everyone's Doing It." I'll share a PDF file of the article if the excerpt below makes you want to read the whole thing.
Download Being Empathetic Is Easier when Everyone’s Doing It | Scientific American

“If you’re surrounded by empathic individuals, it really has an influence. It increases how your brain responds to the pain of another person,” Hein says. “The bad news is, it also works the other way around.” In other words, if you’re surrounded by people who are indifferent or hostile, you’re apt to mirror their social example as well. One 2023 study shows that people who identify as politically liberal have stronger empathetic brain activation than conservatives, raising questions about whether social norms within each political group might drive empathy differences between them.

Makes sense.

The speeches of Kamala Harris are filled with talk about how our country has to do more to help struggling people. She wants more affordable housing, better child care, help for families both raising children and caring for aging relatives, and expanded health benefits, to name a few policy goals.

When us liberals hear her speak this way, we're inspired to do more ourselves to aid those less fortunate than we are. Meanwhile, Trump supporters are being fed a steady diet of fear, anger, lies, and revenge from their own presidential candidate.

So it's no wonder that the lack of empathy conservatives manifest naturally, perhaps because of their individualistic worldview, is exacerbated by being surrounded by members of their chosen "tribe" who are spurred toward even less empathy by Trump's communications with them about how it's fine to be uncaring toward anyone who disagrees with you.

Harris says that she wants to listen to those who have views different from hers. Trump says that he wants to lock up his political opponents. 

Since I see Trump as being a clear and present danger to American democracy, I have a lot of difficulty being charitable toward his supporters, given that they're enabling his destructive authoritarianism. My hope is that if Harris wins the election, Trump will fade away and his influence markedly diminish.

Yesterday I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog that predicted a Harris victory. To learn why I feel this way, check out "Why I expect Harris will beat Trump fairly easily." Of course, I recognized I could be wrong, saying:

So here's some other factors that lead me to believe that not only will Harris defeat Trump, she'll do so by winning more than the 270 electoral votes she'd get by holding on to the usually safe blue states, beating Trump in the Blue Wall of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and gaining the single electoral vote in Nebraska's 2nd District.

(I'm expecting that Harris will win all of the above, plus North Carolina and Nevada. If I'm horribly wrong, gleeful Trump supporters can tell me how stupid I was in post-election comments on this post.)

Sam Harris is backing his (unrelated) namesake. He's made his substack post available to everyone. "Literally and Seriously: Why I Support Kamala Harris for President" is a good read.

If consciousness is immaterial, why does ultrasound boost mindfulness?

I realize that those who believe that consciousness is immaterial are pretty much immune to the evidence that it is a physical phenomenon. 

That evidence is ubiquitous, as I've pointed out many times in blog posts. Anesthesia makes us unconscious. So does being hit on the head with a baseball bat. Caffeine makes consciousness more alert. MDMA ("Ecstasy") makes consciousness feel more loving. 

The October 2024 issue of Scientific American has a short article that presents more evidence for the physical nature of consciousness. Being a daily meditator for most of my life -- I started meditating in 1969 -- I know how difficult it can be to keep the unruly mind under a semblance of control.

The article describes how ultrasound stimulation of a certain part of the brain was able to produce a state of heightened mindfulness.

Again, this isn't exactly breaking news, aside from the ultrasound part. I experienced heightened mindfulness when I worked the night shift at a San Jose fruit cannery one summer during my college years. I hated my job of hosing fruit pulp that dropped from overhead conveyor belts into floor drains. It was wet and messy work.

But after "lunch" at midnight, or whenever it was, I'd take a Benzedrine tablet. This amphetamine changed my mood completely. Now I found my job to be highly enjoyable. All that had changed was a chemical that affected my brain by enabling it to focus much better.

Ultrasound can affect the brain also. Here's the article.

Even when you aren’t doing anything, your brain is relentlessly active—daydreaming, ruminating, contemplating the past or future. How this mind wandering functions can significantly shape a person’s internal conscious experience.

In a recent study of 30 participants, researchers applied low-­intens­ity ultrasound waves to a brain region associated with introspection and off-task mind wandering. Participants who underwent five minutes of ultrasound stimulation reported significantly heightened mindfulness—the ability to be fully present in the moment, without judgment toward others or the self. The results were published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

“I haven’t seen ultrasound technology used in this way, but this type of neuromodulation has significant potential to change how we think about and enhance mindfulness,” says University of Wisconsin–Madison social psychologist Hadley Rahrig, who also studies that state of mind.

The researchers targeted the brain’s default mode network (DMN), a constellation of interconnected areas that become particularly active when the mind disengages with the outside world and drifts into activities such as reminiscing or envisioning the future. Abnormal DMN activity and connectivity have been linked to anxious rumination and depressive symptoms. “You get stuck, where your mind just keeps going and you can’t stop it. We hypothesized that we could use ultrasound stimulation to remove some stickiness and let the network cool off,” says the new study’s lead author, Brian Lord, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Arizona.

Since the DMN was described in 2001, scientists have sought to manipulate itthrough broad-brush methods such as meditation and psychedelic drug therapy. But it remained difficult to precisely adjust DMN function because of its deep-brain location.

To overcome this challenge, Lord and his team used transcranial-focused ultrasound, a technique that converts electric current into concentrated and localized acoustic waves. (Half the participants received sham ultrasound as a control.) These waves can penetrate brain regions with millimeter-level precision and with greater depth than other noninvasive stimulation methods, which typically use magnetic fields or scalp-attached electrodes to induce electric currents spread over several centimeters.

Functional MRI scans showed that the researchers successfully inhibited activity in the posterior cingulate cortex, a key area in the DMN linked to emotional regulation and concentration during meditation. Through questionnaires and an interview, participants in the treatment group reported at least 30 minutes of subjective effects akin to entering a deep meditative state: a distorted sense of time, fewer negative thoughts and an improved ability to detach from their feelings. Other scientists at the University of Arizona are testing this technique to treat mood disorders such as depression.

“One of the greatest barriers to meditation and mindfulness is the steep learning curve. Brain stimulation can act like training wheels for the mind, helping people achieve that deep state of consciousness,” Lord says. “That’s our larger goal.”

Gurus are like Trump: promising protection in return for absolute fealty

My wife found a Slate article by Steven Reisner on Apple News that she thought I'd be interested in, "The Deep Psychological Reason We're Stuck in This Feedback Loop With Donald Trump."

Reisner starts off by saying:

This is the third time Donald Trump has run for president as a major-party candidate, and yet, this cycle, the American electorate and the American press seem unable to fully comprehend the choice we are facing. It is not, as we’ve been trained to think, a contest between an extreme Republican and a middle-of-the-road Democrat.

There is still no language that conveys what the stakes really are. This election is not about politics; it’s much more basic—it’s about how the American determines what is real. Will the future of the country be based on evidence and law, or will government be twisted to reflect whatever Donald Trump tells us is true?

Reality. Truth. Ah, now we're getting into some really interesting philosophical territory, which I find just as interesting, if not more so, than the political side of Reisner's article. Of course, the two are related.

I'm perplexed by how almost half of American voters are willing to worship at what Reisner calls The Church of Trump. I can understand the appeal of ordinary religions. They promise salvation in exchange for faith in things unseen and unproven. 

But how is it that Trump commands such loyalty from his devotees? He lies, cheats, and steals. He cares only about himself, not the needs of others. He is frequently incoherent. He is always hateful and insulting. 

Reisner has a theory about the source of that loyalty. I tend to agree with it, though I never like it when an author appeals to Freud to make some point. Freud's ideas are outmoded in this era of modern psychology and neuroscience. 

However, I still think that the conclusions reached by Reisner make sense. People do seem to be willing to be loyal to a leader if that person promises to protect them. This applies to a guru who promises to protect his disciples from the ravages of death, and to a politician who promises to protect his followers from dangers while they're alive.

We are now at the eleventh hour. The Republicans, under the brilliant tutelage of Donald Trump, have become the Party of Sociopaths, and their aim is to relegate the Democrats to a Party of Hapless Neurotics. The fateful question is, will the Democrats and the mainstream press continue to waste their energy being shocked, or will they change their strategy?

It all boils down to this: How will the American voter assess what is true?

For Republicans (and Fox News), truth no longer has anything to do with facts, or even reality. Truth has returned to its pre-enlightenment meaning; or, as Merriam-Webster puts it, its archaic meaning: “Fidelity, constancy.” To be true, in the medieval Trumpian world, is to be loyal and steadfast. It’s no longer about reason or even belief: It’s about faith. Freud had a word for this kind of primitive faith; he called it illusion.

People crave a godlike father figure, Freud explained, especially when they feel threatened with the eruption of two dangers: “the crushingly superior force of nature … and the shortcomings of society which have made themselves painfully felt.”

In the 21st century, facing severe social inequities just when nature seems most out of control, America is in exactly that vulnerable state. And so it shouldn’t actually surprise us that nearly half the country’s voters have rallied around a sociopathic strongman who promises protection in return for absolute fealty.

Note that truth falls by the wayside in this bargain. Neither a guru nor a politician is able to show exactly how they will be able to protect their devotees from reality's vicissitudes. To their true believers, it really doesn't matter if there's no evidence that the leader's promises can be kept. 

The bargain is what's important. In exchange for unquestioning devotion, the believer is promised protection. This works for politicians like Donald Trump, and it works for gurus like the head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

A model isn't reality, whether we're talking politics or God

Since my mind is so focused on the presidential race here in the United States -- we're a week away from November 5, election day -- I figured I might as well go with the mental flow and write a post about a subject that is germane to both politics and God: modeling. 

Not the sort of modeling where women or men put on designer clothes and strut down a walkway in front of an audience. The sort where a human understanding of some complex aspect of reality is fashioned into a model that attempts to reflect its nature.

This is a subject that first interested me back in the 1970s, when I spent two years working on a Ph.D. in Systems Science. (I finished the coursework, but then became a Ph.D. dropout.) I took several courses in modeling and simulation, a nascent field given the limited computer capabilities at that time.

One theme of that coursework was that a model shows us how the model-maker(s) view the world, thereby making critiques of that viewpoint easier, since the model's assumptions are more clearly visible than the often vague beliefs of we humans are.

But there are other motivations for model-making, whether of the mathematical, conceptual, or any other variety. Yesterday The Atlantic had an article by Brian Klaas, "The Truth About Polling: We Don't Know What We Think We Know About How Americans Will Vote." (Klaas is the author of Fluke, a book I wrote several posts about, including this one.)

Here's how the article starts out. 

Well, it’s that time again: Millions of Americans are stress-eating while clicking “Refresh” on 538’s presidential forecast, hoping beyond hope that the little red or blue line will have made a tiny tick upward. Some may be clutching themselves in the fetal position, chanting under their breath: “There’s a good new poll out of Pennsylvania.”

The stakes of this election are sky-high, and its outcome is not knowable in advance—a combination that most of us find deeply discomfiting. People crave certainty, and there’s just one place to look for it: in the data. Earlier humans might have turned to oracles or soothsayers; we have Nate Silver. But the truth is that polling—and the models that rely primarily on polling to forecast the election result—cannot confidently predict what will happen on November 5.

It's true that we crave certainty, though in my case I'd term this a craving for a high probability of a certain outcome. Sure, I'd be even happier with 100% certainty, but I realize this rarely is possible beyond very simple and short-term phenomena, and really not even then.

I mean, whenever I decide to type certain words on my keyboard, I'm able to do that. However, there's a small probability that I could suffer a stroke or heart attack at any moment that would make it impossible for me to type the words that just entered my mind. 

Given how important the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is, and how much I want Harris to win, I do indeed look at three election prediction models every day. In fact, with the election so close, several times a day, since the models are being updated more frequently. And my mood does indeed rise and fall when I see that a model has either increased or decreased the probability of Harris winning.

(The three I follow are Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin (you can't see the actual forecast without subscribing to Silver, which I do), FiveThirtyEight, and the Economist. 

What Klaas does in his article is ably discuss all the ways that political polls and models make assumptions that are better than pure guesswork, yet are a long way from reflecting the messy, complex, chaotic reality of how voters decide who to cast a ballot for. 

And this is concerning an aspect of reality that is indisputably real. People truly do make decisions about whether to vote in a presidential election, and if they decide to do this, who to vote for. These people can be contacted through a variety of means, though this is difficult for pollsters to do, a source of error. 

Polls also are necessarily a reflection of the past. Yesterday a speaker at a major Trump campaign event insulted Puerto Rico, calling it a floating island of garbage. This caused many Puerto Rico immigrants, who number in the millions, to get angry. How this will affect their vote for Trump or Harris remains to be seen, but some effect is certain.

If it is so difficult to model a fairly well-defined physical phenomenon, who Americans will choose to become president, modeling God and the supernatural is both hugely more difficult and hugely easier.

More difficult, because our conceptual models of God and the supernatural lack demonstrable evidence. Hugely easier, because that lack of evidence means that anyone can come up with their own model of God and the supernatural. 

And while the election prediction models will be tested for their accuracy once the results of the presidential race are known, this isn't the case for models of God and the supernatural, which are the foundation of the world's many religions. They never are tested for accuracy, because there is no demonstrable evidence that what they purport to explain even exists.

We shouldn't take election prediction models very seriously, but they are much more accurate reflections of reality than conceptual models of God and the supernatural.

Awareness is more important than peace of mind

Every day I repeat a brief loving kindness meditation.

It starts with "May I be happy; may I be safe; may I be healthy; may I be at peace." Then I visualize someone I care about, usually my wife, and say the same things but substituting "you" for "I." After that, I zoom out to visualize the entire planet, and say "all" instead of "I."

It's interesting that I have little trouble envisioning myself or someone else being happy, safe, and healthy. But while I enjoy the sentiment, "May ______ be at peace," it's more difficult for me to picture what being at peace consists of.

Is it not being bothered by troubling things? Is it embracing everything that happens with calm acceptance? Is it being detached from the usual ups and downs of life?

Whatever being at peace is, it seems that if I, or anyone else, had it, then being happy, safe, and healthy wouldn't be nearly as important, since even if I or anyone else was unhappy, unsafe, and unhealthy, if we were at peace with that, life would be fine.

I used to think that this was something that meditation would eventually bring to me: peace of mind. Well, that hasn't happened yet, and I doubt that it ever will. I've even become doubtful that peace of mind is something to strive for.

For it seems to be unnatural, not really human, an artificial concept that sounds wonderful, yet is never observed as a living reality -- especially if we're talking about lasting or permanent peace of mind. 

Mindfulness strikes me as not only much more attainable, but more desirable. Meaning, non-judgmental open awareness of what is actually happening within and without us in the present moment.  (Which, of course, is the only moment possible, since the past is gone and the future hasn't happened.)

There's no way I'm always going to be happy, safe, healthy, at peace, or any other quality. Life is constant change. That's what life is, movement. When our mental and physical movement ceases, we're dead. 

So if I want a foundation to my life that offers a solid place to stand no matter what my circumstances are, it won't be peace of mind, which comes and goes depending on the state of my joys, sorrows, anxieties, worries, satisfactions, and all that. 

Mindful awareness, though, that seems doable.

Sure, currently I drift in and out of mindful awareness. Evidence of this is me walking back to my car to make sure I locked it; not being sure whether I took my vitamins and other supplements at the time I usually do; missing a move in a Tai Chi form because I was thinking about what I was going to have for dinner after the class ends.

I've been slowly making my way through a short book by Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence and the Way of Meditative Inquiry. I bought it because I'm a fan of Joan Tollifson's writings, and she studied with Packer for a while and speaks highly of her. 

Here's passages from a chapter called "Is Awareness Enough?" It isn't crystal clear what Packer is getting at here, but I'm fine with some murkiness when the general thrust of an idea makes sense to me, which these passages do.

Waking up during the night and looking out the window, such bright stars! The earth is enveloped in a fresh, white blanket of innocence. No footprints yet. No car tracks. No dirt. An amazing thing -- everything wiped clean. Like turning over a new leaf.

Yesterday I said, "Awareness is not enough." Why did I say that, some people were asking. Feeling the pain and sadness with tears welling up at memories of my late husband, Kyle, I said, "Awareness is not enough."

As I said it I wondered if someone would ask me about that. Somebody did. I do need to say more about what I meant at the time. Feeling love and pain and grief and sadness, one realizes how instantaneously remembrance creates a surge of sensations and emotions.

Memories and physical reverberations are as one -- it seems as though nothing could interrupt that immediate connection. Awareness appears to be there, but the remembering-paining-grieving cycle does not cease just because of it. And that's all right.

Awareness is like a mirror that shows what is happening, what we are at this instant, the joy and grief, pain and well-being, turmoil and peacefulness. Awareness reveals these memory connections but no one  intending or creating them. There is no I to be found directing things -- there is only what has been described. 

What does it mean, "Awareness is not enough?"

Where is our true abiding place at the rock bottom of everything -- an immovable presence? Is it just in the fleeting flow of events, both external and internal -- the thoughts, the feelings and emotions, the organism's reverberations -- and moving along with it all? Or is it simply awaring it all?

...People ask, "Would I be aware if there was nothing to be aware of?" Yes! Awareness needs no object. No subject I! Objects come and go and may even stay away in the depth of meditation. It doesn't matter. What matters is presence. 

Awareness, in which there is no fragmentation, no division, no me here and "everybody else" out there. All that is mind-made stuff. It needs to be seen as such.

Let me answer questions that may be lingering right now in people's minds: Does meditation mean I need to quiet down and be without thoughts? Does it mean I need to see everything about myself?

It's both. It's neither. It is without I. 

In seeing the hills and valleys now shrouded in fog, now lit up by sunlight -- do we see the ideas about them, or is there just unlimited space in which things freely appear and disappear? The open space being oneself, and what appears and disappears oneself, without division.

The factual creation story of physics is more inspiring than religious fantasy

The world's major religions claim that God created our universe. Naturally details are lacking, because religions are all about faith, not facts. 

Modern science also has its creation story, the Big Bang. It takes more effort to understand than the simplistic religious stories. But I find science's story to be much more appealing, largely because I prefer reality over fantasy when it comes to the big questions of life.

(When it comes to thriller novels and television shows, I adore fantasy.)

This isn't to say that the scientific explanation of creation is complete and coherent. It has a lot of holes, including how the Big Bang came to be. However, that's to be expected when the Big Bang wasn't a really big explosion into existing space, but the creation of space and time itself.

In his book, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean, theoretical physicist Matt Strassler talks about the Big Bang phib (physics fib), which is one of the instances where physicists communicate a difficult-to-understand idea by simplifying it for popular consumption.

The Big Bang phib suggests that the universe's birth resembled a bomb detonating in an empty room, creating a fireball that subsequently cooled as it expanded into emptiness. But the universe had no surrounding emptiness. 

Instead, at the earliest times we know anything about, the hot, violent, roiling soup (and in this case, it really was like a soup -- an ordinary medium) of elementary wavicles [particles with a wave nature] was already everywhere throughout the cosmos. 

Even possessing the energy of a gazillion bombs, such a thing couldn't explode outward because there was more hot soup blocking the way, also wishing it could explode. It was a universal firestorm, with nowhere to go.

Normally an everywhere-hot soup, unable to cool or spread out, would remain hot and fixed for eternity. So why didn't the universe just stay that way? Because space can stretch. Some unknown event, even earlier in time, gave the universe a kick that caused space itself to expand rapidly. 

(This kick, or whatever caused it, is what most scientists refer to as "the Big Bang," though not everyone defines the term the same way.)

As the space expanded, it gave the wavicles in the hot soup more room to roam, and so the soup expanded too, allowing it to cool. It's still growing and cooling today, though much more slowly.

Thus, the Big Bang led to an expansion of space full of wavicles; it was not an explosion that shot wavicles into a preexisting void. This is much more interesting than a bomb. Its detailed origins remain unclear.

Strassler is right. An expansion of space itself is indeed much more interesting than a cosmic bomb exploding in preexisting space. It's easy to picture God sitting up in heaven, using his divine power to bring our universe into being.

Easy, because we're used to stuff happening here on Earth in a similar fashion. One day there's an empty lot. The next day excavators are moving dirt around. Soon after that the foundation of a house is constructed. Eventually a house is present on what used to be vacant space.

But it's really difficult to visualize space itself being created. When I try to do this, I end up picturing myself, a bit like God, sitting in a position where I'm watching space expand into some preexisting space. 

That can't be right, though, since I'm within the space that is expanding, and there's no preexisting space for space to expand into. If that were the case, there'd be no point to the expansion, given that space already exists in the area of the expansion. Space doesn't expand into space.

The human mind simply isn't equipped to easily comprehend the deepest mysteries of science. This is one reason why more people embrace religions than science. Religions make God into a being a lot like us, just grander and more powerful. God resides in a place, heaven, while we reside in a different place, this world. 

Science, on the other hand, speaks of time and space as we know it coming into being with the Big Bang. There's nothing in our world of time and space that is akin to the Big Bang. Which is why physics uses the Big Bang phib -- to give people an approximation of what the Big Bang truly was without the mind- boggling aspect of it.

Strassler goes on to explain how protons and neutrons were created. If this had never happened, obviously we wouldn't be here pondering the Big Bang, since protons and neutrons are the stable building blocks of matter.

He describes how the strong nuclear force keeps quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, confined within an atom's nucleus. As we know from nuclear bombs, a tremendous amount of energy is present within small amounts of matter. This energy wasn't introduced from the outside, but is the energy of being, so to speak.

This is a beautiful short paragraph about the Big Bang that I found deeply moving. It reminded me that I'm not a human looking out at the universe. Instead, the universe is looking at itself through me, an integral aspect of the universe.

Now trapped forever inside these droplets, quarks, gluons, and anti-quarks still dash around at speeds at or near c [speed of light], colliding again and again. The bedlam of the Big Bang is caught within, never to escape or fade away. The energy in our bodies, and in all ordinary things, is a tiny remnant of the past, a memory of the universe's violent birth.

Trump is a proven authoritarian fascist. Reminds me of some religious leaders.

Yesterday I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog, "Trump is a fascist, says his chief of staff, John Kelly." Here's part of a quotation from a New York Times story that I included in the post.

In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online.

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr. Trump.

“So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Mr. Kelly said.

He added: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

This got me to thinking about the extent to which religions are led by people (almost always, men) who may not fit all the characteristics of a fascist, yet nonetheless are similar in some regards. For example, this is the first paragraph of my fascist blog post. 

What bothers me the most about today's Republican Party isn't the conservatism -- my mother was a lifelong Republican with deeply held conservative values -- but the Party's dangerous submission to Donald Trump, thereby elevating a single man's personality over Republican principles.

The religious organization I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is led by a guru, Gurinder Singh. If I substitute certain words in the paragraph above, the result is a statement that's a pretty good summary of how I currently feel about RSSB.

What bothers me the most about today's RSSB isn't the spiritual teachings, but RSSB's dangerous submission to Gurinder Singh, thereby elevating a single man's personality over RSSB principles.

Now, it is true that submission to a guru always has been a hallmark of the RSSB teachings. The guru supposedly is God in Human Form, so submission to the guru is viewed as submission to God. Since God is hidden, and the guru is a visible person, it's argued that submission to the guru is even more important than submission to God.

What's different now, though, is similar to the difference Trump has brought to the presidency of the United States. It used to be assumed that every president respected the Constitution and our rule of law. Violations were few and far between. All that changed when Trump became president in 2016.

Trump refused to adhere to longstanding moral and ethical practices that, by and large, previous presidents accepted. This has led to several criminal indictments being filed against Trump. Similarly, Gurinder Singh is the first RSSB guru to be criminally accused of financial fraud that enriched the guru and his family by hundreds of millions of dollars.

So just as Trump made the presidency into a means of fulfilling his personal desires for power, wealth, and praise, Gurinder Singh has done the same thing as the RSSB guru. He is less a spiritual leader who dabbles in business, than a businessman who dabbles in spirituality. Which wouldn't be so bad if his business practices were aboveboard, but they weren't, though so far this hasn't been legally proven.

Most religions are marked by authoritarianism. They aren't committed to democracy.

While voters decide who leads democratic nations, religious leaders typically are chosen by a few people at the top of a religious hierarchy. In the case of RSSB, the previous guru appoints the successor guru. Thus a single person decides who leads the millions of people who belong to RSSB.

Given the nature of religions, this authoritarian top-down rule is taken for granted, being viewed as a reflection of God's dominion over humankind. Nobody tells God what to do, and nobody tells the RSSB guru or the Pope what to do.

In the United States, our Constitution and supporting laws are supposed to constrain the power of the President. But that only works when the person occupying that office respects the rule of law. Likewise, Gurinder Singh has gone against both longstanding RSSB traditions and teachings. 

I wouldn't call him a fascist. But I'd definitely call him an authoritarian guru who cares more about what's good for him personally, than what's good for RSSB. Rather than being a servant of the RSSB organization, as previous gurus aspired to, Gurinder Singh mainly serves his own self-interest.

If God and the supernatural are real, where's the evidence of them?

Religiously minded people like to have it both ways. I know whereof I speak, because I used to be one of those people before I saw the error of my ways. 

The basic error is this: religious believers assert that (1) God and the supernatural can't be known through reason and the physical senses, yet (2) God and the supernatural are real, and deserve the respect shown to these divine realities.

So those of us who reject blind faith are supposed to accept that one or many someones, somewhere, some time, had an experience of God and the supernatural that can't demonstrated to other people, yet is used as proof that these entities are objectively real -- not merely subjective fantasies of the human imagination.

Frequently I see comments on this blog's posts that take issue with my praise of science and demonstrable evidence as the best guide to truth. A commenter will say that only direct personal experience can lead to knowledge of God and the supernatural.

Well, who can argue with direct personal experience? Not me, for sure. There's no way for me, or anyone else, to know what another human is experiencing. Each of us lives within a subjective bubble of consciousness that is off limits to everyone else. 

Perhaps one day neuroscience will evolve to a point where a highly advanced brain imaging device can reveal exactly what someone is experiencing. Not only their sensory experiences -- vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste -- but the detail of each emotion and thought, and every mental picture projected in the theater of consciousness.

We're a long ways from such a device becoming a reality. Such may never happen. But even if it came to be, what would this Experience Revealer be able to tell us about the truth or falsehood of what a person is experiencing? 

Very little. Arguably, nothing. Dreams are experiences. So are fantasies. So is imagination. Each of us is easily able to conjure images that exist only within our own consciousness, not anywhere in shared reality.

Thus even if personal experience could be released from the confines of an individual mind through an Experience Machine, once revealed to others that personal experience would need to be confirmed as reflecting objective reality in order to be viewed as anything other than the product of a subjective consciousness. 

If religious people want to elevate reports of personal experiences that supposedly point toward God and the supernatural as worthy of worship, I've got no problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with someone looking upon their own personal experience as a reflection of divinity.

What I object to is the basic error noted above. If the only evidence for God and the supernatural is personal experience, with reason and the physical senses irrelevant, then religious believers can't expect anyone else to accept their claim of divine knowledge.

Many years ago the Flying Spaghetti Monster was put forward as an object of worship. Though this was done in jest, the point was serious. The tenets of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, or any other religion are as unprovable and absurd as the Flying Spaghetti Monster is.

Anyone can make a claim about anything. That's free speech. But to be taken seriously, the claim has to be backed up with verifiable evidence. That's science.  

Science says the energy of matter is the energy of being

In my religious true-believing days, I would have made more of the scientific understanding shared in this blog post than what the understanding supports. Meaning, it isn't at all mystical, though it contains echoes of certain mystical teachings.

Or more accurately, those teachings contain echoes of scientific truth.

Today I got to the chapter in theoretical physicist Matt Strassler's book, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean, where he reveals the secret that he's been building up to in the part of the book that precedes the Quantum section. 

I'm tempted to summarize what he said, but I'm resisting that temptation, because I'd surely screw up some aspect of Strassler's big reveal, and I don't want to do that. 

This is really interesting physics, expressed in a fashion that I've never come across in the many other books about the new physics that I've read. So enjoy Strassler's words. He begins by recollecting a class discussion about the electron's rest mass and energy. He calls quantum phenomena "wavicles" rather than particles, because they have both wave and particle characteristics. 

Strassler states that a stationary electron is nothing like a stationary dot.

"Notice how different this is from the image in the atomic cartoon," I remarked, "which encourages us to imagine a stationary electron as a little ball, sitting there and doing absolutely nothing. A standing wavicle is much more interesting than that. It's always vibrating. In fact, an electron is vibrating a million billion times every second.

"And here's the key point. Simply because it's vibrating, it has energy!"

The first student squinted at me. "Are you saying that the electron's vibration energy is what gives it rest mass?"

"Exactly!" I exclaimed. 

Now the rest of the class was beginning to look interested. After a few moments to let them think, I gave them another perspective.

"Let me say this a different way. Imagine the electron field in your vicinity isn't vibrating; its value is zero, and the space is empty. You decide you want to make an electron from scratch. To do that, you have to make the electron field vibrate, like a guitar player plucking a string. The amount of energy you need to add to the electron field, to get it to vibrate with precisely one stationary electron -- one wavicle's worth of vibration, standing still in front of you -- is exactly the electron's rest mass times [c²].

Here's yet another way to look at it," I added. "An electron is, by nature, a vibration. It can't exist without constantly vibrating, any more than a human can exist without a heartbeat. All vibrating things have energy, even if they're not going anywhere. So an electron, even when stationary, has to have energy. This energy is intrinsic to it; take the energy away, and the electron ceases to exist. It's this intrinsic energy that gives it rest mass."

An electron is a vibration; vibrations always have energy; without the energy, there is no vibration and therefore no electron. It's the vibrational energy that leads to rest mass. I summed it up in a way I hoped the students wouldn't forget.

"In essence, an electron's rest mass is its energy-of-being."

This is the long-awaited secret. Our bodies are constructed from vibrations -- literally. These vibrations are quanta of waves, known as wavicles. An elementary wavicle's rest mass arises from its energy-of- being... the energy required for it to exist in the first place.

This energy isn't like the chemical energy stored in a battery or the fuel in a car, which can be added or taken out. Nor can it flow in and out like water. It's a precondition for the electron to be.

You might reasonably complain that I should have explained this from the start. I've misled you for half a book by implying that an object's rest mass is always the energy that is found inside it. In my experience, telling the whole story too early makes it harder to understand. You have to first escape the atomic cartoon. If it's still dominating your thinking -- if you're visualizing an electron as a dot -- the possibility that the electron could have energy inherently, by the very nature of its vibratory existence, doesn't make any sense. Scientists themselves took decades to figure it out.

It's quite natural, from the perspective of someone looking at an electron from a distance, to misinterpret its hidden vibrational energy. It clearly isn't motion energy, because it's there even when the electron is stationary, and it clearly isn't external to the electron, since it travels with the electron wherever it goes. Based on common sense, one might guess that this energy must be internal to -- stored inside -- the electron. It takes imagination to realize that the electron could possess this energy in a completely different way, as only a wavicle can. 

...Mass is not equal to frequency in some general sense but only in a very specific one. For an elementary wavicle, rest mass represents its energy-of-being -- the energy required for the wavicle to exist -- which in turn is set by the resonant frequency of its field.

This explains, finally, why rest mass has everything to do with resonance. Fields that can resonate have wavicles with rest mass. For a species that so often puts music at the center of celebration, worship, and pleasure, this is deeply appealing. Like any musical instrument, the cosmos resonates with a pattern of frequencies, one that our formula translates directly into the pattern of the elementary wavicles' rest masses. These wavicles, the bricks of the material world, are the musical quanta -- the quietest tones -- of this instrument. The universe rings everywhere, in every thing. 

I'm learning some things by caring for my wife

As I said in my previous post, "My wife's shoulder surgery is a growth opportunity for me," since Laurel had shoulder replacement surgery last Tuesday, I've been her caregiver -- and will be for the 4-6 weeks she'll have to wear a sling on her right arm (we're hoping for four weeks).

Until you can't use an arm for much, it's difficult to know all the things you won't be able to do anymore. We're rediscovering those things, since Laurel had rotator cuff surgery on the same arm about ten years ago that also required her to use a sling for a month. Of course, we were a decade younger then, so everything is a bit tougher now that we're in our mid-70s rather than mid-60s.

I've been having to do a lot more around the house than I usually do.

For example, Laurel used to walk our dog in the morning and I did it most afternoons. Now I handle both walks. We shared cooking duties before her surgery. Now I have to help Laurel with her meals, unless it's a simple one that doesn't require two hands. For the first 48 hours my wife was constantly using a machine with a timer to ice her shoulder, 40 minutes on, 20 minutes off. My job was to rotate three sets of 12 frozen water bottles into the machine every eight hours, making sure a thoroughly frozen set always was available.

What I've discovered from all this extra taking care of Laurel is that the more I'm focused on her needs, the less it bothers me when something goes wrong in my life. This both surprised and pleased me. The first time it happened, it felt like I'd taken a pill that reduced the sensation of the problem I was having by about half. 

Meaning, what used to irritate me considerably now irritated me only a little. It was as if constantly putting Laurel's needs before my own, even for just a couple of days, considerably lowered the feeling of Me I normally carry around. Having less Me rattle around in my mind, and more She (my wife), left less for an irritation to latch onto. 

Someone asked in a comment on my first post about Laurel's surgery why I'd said that she had doubts about the surgery beforehand. The basic reason is that my wife still could use her right arm, and with physical therapy sometimes it didn't even hurt her. Since all surgery has risks, Laurel had to weigh the pros and cons of shoulder replacement surgery.

In the recovery room, where we got instructions for post-operative care, Laurel mentioned to her doctor that she hadn't been sure whether she really needed the surgery. The doctor unhesitatingly said, "You did; though you don't have a complete rotator cuff tear, it would have torn completely at some point." This made us both feel better, especially since the surgery went well. It strengthened my feeling that as difficult as it will be for my wife and me in the next 4-6 weeks of recovery, that will pay off with an increased quality of life for Laurel once she can use her right arm with confidence again.

So I'm doing my best to adjust to the changes in my routine caused by my new caregiver role. I used to enjoy my hour or so of reading and meditation time in the morning. Now I have to take our dog for a walk then. Mooka is a very active Husky mix who needs two lengthy walks a day, which are mostly off leash since we live in a rural area with nature trails on easements through the properties in our development.

Yesterday I was walking with Mooka to our nearby 9-acre community lake. I'll share a photo of it that I took as we were crossing the earthen dam. Our house is in the trees at the far end of the lake, about in the middle of the photo. Our ten acres doesn't adjoin the lake, but just one lot separates us and the lake.

Soon after Mooka and I started our walk, I'd been idly thinking about how I wasn't going to have time to meditate that morning and would have to squeeze in some meditation time later in the day. Then it dawned on me, That's crazy talk. In my current frame of mind, meditation is simply being as fully aware as possible of what I'm experiencing. I'm on a walk now. If I can be fully aware of that walk, this is meditation, just as sitting in a chair with eyes closed is.

That realization brought peace of mind. I stopped worrying about missing my meditation time, because any time is meditation time if it's mindful. I knew this before, but it took the big change in my routine following Laurel's surgery to truly grasp what I already knew conceptually.

My wife's shoulder surgery is a growth opportunity for me

For a long time I felt that my daily meditation was the best way for me to become a better person. Looking back, that was a selfish attitude.

I'd bought into a form of pseudo-spirituality that taught self-realization (I'm soul, not body!) was the stepping stone to god-realization (My soul is a drop of the divine ocean!). 

I call it "pseudo" because in my current frame of mind, genuine spirituality is about forgetting the self as much as possible, not trying to enhance it, even if the supposed enhancing is aimed at merging with the Grandest Self of All, god. 

Acting for the good of others is a higher purpose than acting for our own good. And I'm not talking about a narrow definition of  "others," such as a guru.

During my true believing days when I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-centered religious organization, I encountered many RSSB initiates who were all in on selfless service -- to the guru.

They'd journey to the RSSB headquarters in India or a RSSB center in their own country to reap the spiritual benefit of seva, volunteer service. I did that too, but I never felt that this sort of service was more important than all the ways we can be of service to friends, family, our community, and such.

In fact, in a way it was less important than those other ways, since service to the guru and his organization had a Me-Me-Me vibe to it. It wasn't really selfless service, because the sevadar doing the service supposedly was getting major benefits from serving the guru, God in Human Form.

Karmas were erased, easing the way for the soul to soar to higher supernatural regions of reality. The guru's grace was bestowed upon his servants. Detachment from worldly relations chaining us to this realm of illusion was made easier by attachment to the guru.

I'm not saying that other forms of service are free of self-righteousness, ego, and desire. A volunteer at a food bank may enjoy the feeling of doing something that others will applaud them for. That's human nature -- to care as much about ourselves as other people. 

But we can aspire to a purer form of service that is founded in love, not self-gain. I have that aspiration, even though I am a long way from achieving it. 

That's how I'm looking at the shoulder replacement surgery that my wife, Laurel, had today.

Ten years ago she had shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. After it became re-torn, Laurel engaged in a lengthy process of deciding whether to have another surgery or make do with a painful right shoulder that limited what she could do with that arm.

It wasn't easy to decide on a shoulder replacement. Just a few days ago Laurel was still having doubts about whether she was doing the right thing. In the end she answered "yes," which is how I went with her to a 7 am appointment for the surgery today. 

She drove us to the Salem Health outpatient surgery building, since that was the last time she'd be able to drive for at least a month, until her sling comes off. For the next 4-6 weeks I'm my wife's caregiver. Today and tomorrow, I'm giving her an especially large amount of care, given that Laurel is supposed to use an ice machine for 40 minutes on/20 minutes off for two days after her surgery to reduce inflammation.

I've already learned some things about myself. Not new stuff, really, just confirmations of my old stuff.

I enjoy bringing food and drink to Laurel. I like figuring out how the ice machine works and keeping it stocked with 12 bottles of frozen water (easier than using regular ice). I don't mind feeding and walking our dog twice a day rather than once a day.

I'm getting a fresh appreciation of the marriage vows "for better or worse, in sickness and in health." It's easier to love someone when things are better and healthier, but it's more satisfying when love works through tough times. 

Of course, I find myself starting to get irritated when, say, I'm trying to write this blog post and Laurel needs me to do something for her. I'm a creature of routine, and now my routine will be considerably different for a month or so. 

Which is good for me. I need some shaking up. Laurel, like most women, does more of our household chores than I do. Now it's time for me to serve her to a greater extent than I usually do. I don't have to fly off to India for this service, this seva. 

She's right in the next room, waiting for me to refill the ice machine with fresh water bottles to keep her shoulder cool through the night. 

Why the mystical notion of a "sound current" is at odds with science

I used to belong to an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), whose teachings centered on the notion of shabd, or sound current -- considered to be the audible voice of God, being an all-pervading conscious energy that created and sustains the cosmos, including our physical universe.

Believing in this, my first book was called God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder: Echoes of Ultimate Reality in the New Physics. (In the shorter and simpler version that I published after the original book went out of print, I changed the subtitle to Echoes of Spiritual Reality in the New Physics, which makes more sense.)

In the course of reading theoretical physicist Matt Strassler's book, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean, I've gotten some insights that point to why I came to believe that the sound current is an intriguing idea, but almost certainly no more than that. Here's how Strassler starts off an "Elementary Fields" chapter. 

In this chapter, we make a first attempt to grasp how the cosmos works, trying to understand its fields using analogies with the ordinary fields of the last chapter. As we proceed, we will be retracing steps taken by generations of physicists over the last century and a half. Right from the start, our approach will encounter problems, and the further we go, the worse the difficulties will become.

I tell you this now so that you won't be expecting a moment of sudden enlightenment. This chapter will end ambiguously, and we will escape to firmer ground only thereafter. 

But we have to travel this route. To fathom our astonishing universe requires a deep appreciation of why the last century's greatest scientific minds have failed to make sense of it, and why it could justifiably be called "an impossible sea."

The basic message of the last chapter is that an ordinary field represents a property of an ordinary medium. In the chapter before that, we encountered the idea of a medium in the context of waves: air as the medium for sound waves, rock as the medium for seismic waves, and so on. Now we want to put this triad of concepts -- medium, field, and wave -- together. 

We've largely established how the members of our first triad, air, wind, and sound, are related to one another. Wind is the flow of air. Sound waves are ripples in air. Air is the medium for sound waves in particular and for the wind more broadly.

Now, an interesting thing is that the ordinary fields are quite different from the elementary fields. Elementary fields include electromagnetism and gravity. They aren't localized like sound. They are present everywhere in the universe. 

And with the exception of gravity, science hasn't been able to identify a medium in which the elementary fields reside. After the discovery that light was a manifestation of the electromagnetic field, scientists of that time assumed that just as sound requires the medium of air (there's no sound in a vacuum), light must require a medium that they called luminiferous aether. 

Problem was, experiments showed no evidence of it. Eventually it was determined that waves in the electromagnetism field only require empty space to propagate. Meaning they move at the speed of light through nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, since Einstein proved that gravity is the warping of space, or space-time, so somehow the nothing of empty space is able to warp under the influence of mass. 

Turning to the sound current, which is theorized to manifest as divine sound and light that can be perceived by subtle senses of the soul, this means that it isn't really a problem scientifically that the "wave" of the sound current lacks a medium through which it propagates. Waves of electromagnetism do just fine moving through empty space. 

A much bigger problem for those who, like me, sought to blend ancient mysticism with modern science, is that there's no evidence that the sound current exists -- which can only be known through its effects. For all fields are known through their effects. Drop a spoon and the effect of gravity is evident. Flip a light switch and the effect of electromagnetism is evident.

Where's the effect of the sound current, or shabd, other than in the mind of someone who believes in it? If the only place the sound current manifests is in the brain of those who believe it exists, this is no different than fairies being only as real as a belief. 

One would think that the divine power that supposedly brought our universe into being, and continues to sustain it, would have some effects beyond the forces known to science: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong forces.

Again, there's not really a problem with the sound current lacking a medium, but not manifesting any effects is a huge problem -- at least for those of us who want our spirituality to be founded in objective reality, not subjective belief.

If anyone who believes in the sound current can demonstrate some provable effects of it in the physical world, I look forward to reading your comment on this post that contains such evidence. But I'm deeply skeptical that anyone can do this. 

Common sense is a poor guide to objective reality

As I said about a week ago, I'm enjoying theoretical physicist Matt Strassler's book, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean.

I've made my way through chapters about Motion, Mass, and Waves. Then I'll get to read about Fields, Quantum, Higgs, and Cosmos. Strassler is an engaging writer. He makes science readable, though it still takes some work to grasp his core points.

One of the things I most enjoy about the book are the facts about the world based on physics that I either never knew, or once knew and needed reminding about. For example...

-- While weight usually is closely associated with mass in everyday life, weight and mass are very different on the moon. There the human body weighs much less than on Earth, but if someone tries to throw a brick on the moon, it would take just as much effort as on Earth, since mass is unchanged by reduced gravity. 

-- Rest mass is different from relativistic mass. If an object is stationary, and so is the person measuring the mass of the object, this rest mass will be an objective quality that everyone agrees on. However, if an object is in motion, or an observer is, the theory of relativity shows that the relativistic mass will be larger than the rest mass. A proton accelerated to full speed inside the Large Hadron Collider has a relativistic mass thousands of times greater than its rest mass. 

-- If the moon somehow stopped moving, it would fall toward the center of the Earth under the influence of gravity. If the moon was moving more rapidly, it would escape Earth's gravity and soar away from our planet. As it is, in common with all the other planets and moons in our solar system, the moon is delicately balanced at the exact point where it continually falls toward Earth but never moves either toward Earth or away from Earth. Hence, it orbits. 

-- Nothing is required to maintain the moon in its orbit around Earth, or Earth in its orbit around the Sun. Since there is no friction in space, and an object in motion maintains that motion unless something interferes with it. the moon and Earth will keep on orbiting forever -- at least, until the Sun expands into a giant fireball that will obliterate our planet many billions of years from now.

-- A pendulum clock (my mother had one, probably from my grandmother) is able to keep accurate time even as the non-electric spring mechanism powering the clock winds down because the frequency of a pendulum, how often it swings, remains the same even as its amplitude, how widely it swings, changes. This is a basic feature of the universe, as waves such as electromagnetism have the same feature: a constant frequency and inconstant amplitude. If this wasn't the case, music would be impossible, since the pitch (if that's the right word; I'm not musical) of a note would change with volume.

Strassler writes about how science provides truths about reality that our senses are clueless about. 

Many other scientific instruments, including various kinds of telescopes, not only magnify an object but convert an invisible phenomenon into a visible image. Nor is this limited to sight: an ordinary radio is a device for turning radio waves, a form of invisible light, into sound waves that our ears can hear, while an ultrasound scanner converts unheard sound into a visible-light image.

We use sensory enhancements every day without even thinking about it, making use of features of the world that not long ago lay beyond our grasp.

People who claim to believe only what their senses tell them are missing out on the vast majority of what there is to know in the universe. They are also deceiving themselves. After all, even a cell phone exploits the unseen and unheard and unfelt. The fact that modern gadgets seem like magic, making use of the universe beyond human senses, points out yet again the weakness of common sense in the physical world.

I liked how Strassler makes the same point that other scientists do: that evolution is aimed at enhancing reproductive fitness, not at revealing truth. For that, we need science.

Nevertheless, what we experience as ordinary existence is an illusion created for us by our brains. It is based on the interaction of our senses with the physical world, not on the physical world directly. The illusion has to help us survive in the real world, so it had better have something to do with reality; it needs to inform us when there's a fruit tree or a hungry tiger nearby.

But beyond that, there's no reason that it needs to be scientifically accurate. The reason that many objects in the world seem opaque and impenetrable is this: for most practical purposes in human life, they act as though they are. But while evolution focuses on what is practical, physics is about what is real, and there's no reason they should agree. 

...All of our sensory organs take in information only when it reaches our bodies, not before. What they learn is then used by our brains to gain some idea of the objects around us and to create for our consciousness a picture of the outer world. 

We experience that picture as though it were reality, unaware or forgetful of the fact that it is a partial reconstruction of the outside world and in no sense a direct image of it. Everything we know of the environment around us is both indirect and incomplete. 

RSSB gurus meet with Pope Francis. I comment on a report of their meeting.

Today in a comment someone shared a link to a story on the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) web site  about the two RSSB gurus -- Gurinder Singh Dhillon and Jasdeep Singh Gill -- meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on October 5.

(Dhillon apparently is still the chief guru, while Gill has taken on some of the guru responsibilities but not all of them, being the guru-in-waiting.)

I found RSSB's description of the meeting to be theologically problematic. Below are my comments on the story, in boldface. The RSSB story is in regular type.

Baba Gurinder Singh and Hazur Jasdeep Singh were invited to Armenia at the invitation of the Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI Minassian, of the Armenian Catholic Church. The invitation included a visit to the Holy Father, Pope Francis at the Vatican.

At the meeting with the Patriarch, Baba Ji and Hazur Ji spoke about the common ties that bind all faiths to the Creator. While we may have been separated by distance and language, our journey to return home and live in His will remains the unifying goal.

Well, I disagree that all faiths have common ties to the Creator, God. That's the RSSB party line, but it goes against the obvious major differences between religions.

While I'm no expert on the world's theologies, I'm confident that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam don't share with RSSB the goal of what amounts to soul travel -- rising to supernatural realms of creation through several hours of meditation each day under the guidance of a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form. 

Regarding "living in His will," RSSB teaches that it is a sin to eat meat, fish, or eggs and to consume alcohol. This definitely is at odds with the precepts of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. So is the notion that initiation by a Perfect Living Master, which Dhillon and Gill supposedly are, is essential to return to God.

On the 5th of October Baba Gurinder Singh and Hazur Jasdeep Singh had an audience with Pope Francis. The Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI Minassian was also present at the meeting.

Baba Ji started the meeting with an introduction of RSSB and stressed the commonality between the different faiths of the world. As an example he spoke about the importance of the “Word” and the “Shabad” amongst our paths. In both Catholicism and Sant Mat the creation began with the Word/Shabad and is sustained with the energy of the Creator through the Shabad. Baba Ji mentioned RSSB publishes over a hundred books that highlight the commonality between the faiths of the world and that the ultimate goal of all is to be one with the Creator.

Dhillon, referred to as Baba Ji, is wrong. I defy anyone to show convincing evidence that Catholicism teaches the Indian notion of shabd, basically all-pervading conscious energy that manifests as divine sound and light, is how creation came into being and continues to be sustained. 

Again, I realize that RSSB interprets the "Word" in the Bible as meaning shabd. However, this is an attempt by RSSB to claim that the teachings of RSSB are the foundation of every world religion, even if those religions don't know this to be true. In my current view, which is different from what I believed during most of the 35 years I was an active member of RSSB, each religion is entitled to determine what its teachings consist of. 

RSSB doesn't have the right to tell Catholicism, or any other religion, what its teachings are. I'm virtually 100% certain that mainstream Christianity, Judaism, and Islam don't consider that their ultimate goal "is to be one with the Creator." In fact, this would be blasphemy for those religions, since they don't share RSSB's belief that humans can unite with God. Their goal is worship of God, not union.

The Holy Father, Pope Francis, stated that he respected any institution that laid emphasis on the unity amongst all people. That amongst this time of global uncertainty and conflict, harmony was essential and all of us must work towards that common goal.

It sounds to me like the Pope, courteous guy that he is, sidestepped the obvious fact that RSSB and Catholicism have very different theologies, focusing instead on the uncontroversial notion of unity among all people. After all, every person shares in our common humanity. The Pope's statement wasn't at all mystical, but practical, calling for harmony among nations and their citizens.

Baba Ji also presented a set of books to Pope Francis, published by RSSB, that highlight how each faith in its own way has sought to lay a path of the journey of the soul to return to its Creator.

The RSSB books likely will find their way into the Vatican library, where they will be read by just a few people, almost certainly not including the Pope. But hey, if the Pope ever applies for initiation into RSSB, being convinced by the books that he needs to dump the Catholic teachings and embrace "the journey of the soul to return to its Creator," after I recover from the intense shock of this, I'll be pleased to admit that I was wrong about the Pope not being a fan of the RSSB teachings.

Baba Ji and Hazur Ji also visited Armenia, this was their first visit to the country and they left with fond memories of the people, the culture and the history of this ancient country.

The Holy Father Pope Francis requested Baba Ji to pray for him as he would in turn pray for Baba Ji.

I guess the Pope wasn't aware that Dhillon, Baba Ji, is considered to be God in Human Form, so he's the one people pray to.

Here's my churchless "death letter." But I'm not dying.

Yesterday on my HinesSight blog I wrote a post called "My 76th birthday has me thinking about sending death letters before I die." Here's how it starts out.

For a while I've been pondering the notion of sending death letters to friends, family, and other people important to me -- not letters to be delivered after I die, but while I'm very much alive, not even sick. 

This idea has gained strength as I approach my 76th birthday. That sounds damn old to me. Which, it is.

My sister died at 71. My mother died at 73. My father, almost entirely absent from my life, died at 73 (best I can estimate; I'm not sure about the exact age).

So while I'm pretty healthy at the moment, having taken better care of myself than those relatives, I still sort of feel like I've living on borrowed time. After all, usually we have no way of knowing when we'll take our last breath.

Accidents happen. Unexpected heart attacks happen. Murders happen. The only way death is known in advance is if we commit suicide or if we have a fatal disease whose course is predictable.

My sister and mother died without me being able to speak with them. My father, the same, though we were so distant, I might not have wanted to talk with him before his death. 

I regret not being able to tell my sister and mother how much I loved them and would miss them. Hopefully they knew this, but we weren't a super-intimate family. I never told them things that I now wish I had, such as regrets about how I could have been a better brother or son, and my appreciation for all they did for me which, in retrospect, I took for granted more than I should have.

That's my motivation for writing individualized death letters to people I care about and sending them out while I'm alive and well, aside from some chronic health problems that are annoying rather than life-threatening. 

The letters would be a reflection of my deep feelings for these people. They'd allow me to say things more honestly and directly than I'm able to do in my usual communications with them. I'd imagine that I was on my death bed, even though I wouldn't be. What would I want to say to each of them if I knew that I only had fifteen minutes of living left?

For sure it wouldn't be aimless chit-chat. It would be heartfelt, real, emotional.

I'm beginning my death letter project with this post directed at those who visit my Church of the Churchless blog. Not just current visitors, everyone who has visited here since I started the blog in 2004 -- which now has a total of 3,655 posts, 74,366 comments, and 7,377,169 pageviews. 

I hope to keep this blog going for many more years. But one thing is certain about life: it's uncertain. This was the last paragraph of my HinesSight post.

If I ever have a sudden massive heart attack or find a big semi-truck about to hit my little Subaru head on, I don't want my last thought to be, Damn, I never told _____ how much I care about them.  I'd rather have it simply be, Fuck! I'm about to die!

So I'm saying it now: I deeply care about every single person who visits this blog, even though I've met very few of you in person. Without people reading and commenting on my posts, this blog would simply be me sending words into a cyberspace void. 

I realize that I annoy visitors who don't share my increasingly atheistic worldview. Thanks for putting up with me. Though it may not always seem like I'm practicing what I'm preaching, I truly do believe in what the tagline of this blog calls spiritual independence. 

That includes believing in God and the supernatural. While I can sound harsh toward religious believers, naturally I have friends who fall into that camp. When speaking to people face-to-face, I never belittle their religion because that wouldn't be courteous. 

I readily admit that sometimes my criticisms of religiosity cross the line from reasonable objection to rabid insults.  As is obvious, I'm decidedly imperfect. My passion for the truth as I see it can get the better of me. 

When I started this blog I figured that most visitors to it would be like me, not affiliated with any religion, though perhaps they were in the past, also like me. But judging from comments on my posts, a large share of visitors believe in God and the supernatural.

That's been a good thing, actually.

So while I'm thankful to everyone who visits this blog, I'm especially thankful to those who read and comment on my posts and aren't atheist or agnostic. You help keep this blog from being an echo chamber of religious skeptics. That would be boring, even though at first I thought that's what I wanted this blog to be.

I struggle with life much of the time. Always have, always will. Writing for me has been much needed therapy, a way for me to get out of my personal worrying mind and into ideas that are more universal. Each night I sit down at my MacBook Pro laptop and write a post for one of my three blogs.

Every other day I write a churchless post, because this blog has more visitors than my HinesSight and Salem Political Snark blogs. As I sit down to compose a post, I feel the presence of Church of the Churchless visitors. It isn't that I'm writing for you, since really I'm writing for myself.

However, you're in my mind, an unseen group of people that I want to share some ideas with that interest me. I'm grateful for your presence. It makes me feel less lonely to know that even though we likely will never encounter each other in person, you're out there, scattered around the world, forming a little community.

A weird little community, and I mean that in a good way. Each person who comments regularly has their own unique style. For some reason the bar scenes in the early Star Wars movies come to mind, if I'm remembering those alien worlds correctly. 

There's a lot of strange creatures drinking (if that's what they were doing) and carrying on. Yet somehow they all get along together. Well, except when they don't. Then a fight might break out. Just like on this blog.

We've all got our own ways of looking at the world. Often they conflict. But we keep on talking and carrying on. All that has been a source of great satisfaction for me. If I die tomorrow, or ten years from now (the actuarial prediction for my remaining lifespan), this blog will have been one of my activities that I feel most good about. 

Thanks for making that possible.

We are made from waves of the universe

For thirty-five years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization that taught the ultimate reality of the cosmos is all-pervading conscious energy termed shabd, in English sound current. 

I wrote a book on behalf of RSSB called God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, in which I argued that findings of the new physics reflected the message of ancient mysticism that waves of conscious energy not only permeate our universe but actually are the deep-down nature of the universe.

I no longer believe in the supernatural aspect of this viewpoint, but I've maintained my interest in how modern physics looks upon the foundation of physical reality. That foundation rests on relativity theory and quantum mechanics, the two great discoveries of the first part of the 20th century.

Recently I started reading a book by Matt Strassler that I believe I learned about in the magazine New Scientist, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean. Though I've only read the first few chapters, that's enough to tell me I'm going to enjoy the book a lot.

Strassler has a great background. Of course, I'm biased toward bloggers. Strassler's blog is called Of Particular Significance. The book's cover says:

Matt Strassler is a theoretical physicist, blogger, and writer whose research often takes him to the Large Hadron Collider. An associate of the Harvard University Physics Department and a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study, he was previously a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and Rutgers University. He lives in rural Massachusetts.

I have the impression that now Strassler is semi-retired and has written this book aimed at a general readership to communicate the meaning of physics as he sees it, in addition to the facts of physics. He starts off with an amazing fact that usually escapes our attention.

Imagine yourself clinging, like a character in a spy thriller, to the roof of a bullet train hurtling along at 150 miles per hour. Your situation is extremely precarious. As you are dragged along, the air resists your passage, and a hurricane-force wind threatens to push you off the back of the train. Your hair flies around wildly as you hang on for dear life.

And yet, as you read the opening words of this book, you may well have forgotten that you are sailing across the cosmos at 150 miles per second. That's over 500,000 miles per hour. You are carried along with the Earth and Sun, in their orbit of our galaxy's center, thousands of times faster than the imaginary train. Nevertheless, you feel no space resistance. There is no "space wind" blowing your hair about. You travel through empty space as though it's not even there.

After a brief one-page introduction to empty space, gravitational waves, light waves, and elementary particles, Strassler turns more philosophical in a pleasingly science'y sense after noting that both gravitational and light waves have an unbreakable cosmic speed limit of about 186,000 miles per second, or 670 million miles per hour. 

Why is there a single speed restriction that applies to all these different objects? Perhaps electrons and quarks, too, are part of the same structure that incorporates light, gravitational waves, and space. If so, what might this mysterious structure or system be, and how might it work? Our knowledge is limited. but we have a name for it. We call it "universe."

I don't just mean The Universe, as written with a capital "U" and spoken into a microphone with lots of echo -- the gigantic black spaces that we typically block out of our minds except on clear, dark nights. I'm referring to the universe writ small as well as large, as it plays out in our daily living: in our own bodies, in our homes, and in everything we encounter during every moment of every ordinary day.

Here's another curious fact, perhaps another clue. Obviously, you and I can't move through solid rock; we'd face stiff rock resistance, far more severe and destructive than the air resistance that would endanger us atop a bullet train. Yet seismic waves in the Earth's rock caused by earthquakes and volcanoes, don't have this problem. They can travel directly across our planet from one side to the other facing no resistance whatsoever.

How do they manage this little miracle? It's not so mysterious. To the rock, our bodies are alien; the rock resists our presence in its territory. But seismic waves are vibrations of the rock itself. They belong there.

So what does it mean that we move through empty space -- through the universe -- without space resistance? Our drawings and descriptions of basic physics subtly lead us to imagine ourselves as made from ingredients that exist within the universe. But perhaps that's not so. It seems as though we are made from waves of the universe. 

I do not mean this in a spiritual or metaphorical sense, though there's no harm in those resonances if you are inclined to hear them. My meaning here is concrete, tangible, real in the scientific sense. I am suggesting that our very substance is the cosmos in action.

From this perspective, we are not merely residents of the universe, living within it as we live within our houses and apartments. Nor do we swim through the universe as fish swim through the sea. We are aspects of the universe, as seismic waves are aspects of rock and as sound waves are aspects of the air.

A better understanding of how the cosmos works, then, is a path to a better understanding of ourselves. 

This gives a fresh understanding of the ancient Greek adage, "Know thyself." To know ourselves, says Strassler, is to know the universe. It also undermines the oft-heard saying in spiritual circles, "We are not material beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a material experience." 

Well, the more likely truth is that we are material beings having a material experience, and introducing "spiritual" into the conversation runs the danger of making a simple truth into a complex falsehood that confuses more than clarifies. 

New RSSB guru, Jasdeep Singh Gill, gets paramilitary commando protection

A few days ago someone sent me a link to a story in an Indian publication, ThePrint, titled "Centre provides Z category VIP security to Radha Soami head." I've copied in the short story below.

This sure is a strange new world we're living in, where the guru of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB)  is considered to need such protection. 

The RSSB teachings proclaim that the guru is God in Human Form. I guess God requires armed security to keep Him/Her/It safe. 

New Delhi, Oct 1 (PTI) The Centre has granted the Z category VIP security cover of armed paramilitary commandos to Jasdeep Singh Gill, the newly appointed spiritual head of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, official sources said Tuesday.

The Union home ministry has asked the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to take charge of the security of the 45-year-old religious head.

A Z category security cover has been approved by the Centre for Gill following a threat perception report prepared and recommended by central intelligence agencies. Armed CRPF commandos will secure him across the country, the sources said.

A squad of 12-14 commandos will be with the VIP round-the-clock and in shifts, they said.

The Radha Soami Satsang Beas, headquartered along the banks of Beas river near Amritsar in Punjab, has a large number of followers across the country and abroad. Top political leaders, business tycoons and famous people from various walks of life visit the sect headquarters regularly.

Gill was appointed as the head of the sect early last month. He is an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi alumnus, and holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from Cambridge.

He was the chief strategy officer and senior management personnel at Cipla, India, from where he stepped down earlier this year. His wife is a doctor.

His father, Sukhdev Singh Gill, retired from the Army in the Colonel rank and he reached Beas more than two decades ago. Jasdeep Singh Gill has been visiting and doing ‘sewa’ at the ‘Dera’ (Beas) for the last 30 years, sources at the sect had said. PTI NES TIR TIR

This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

There's a place for intelligent thinking. But we should be aware of its limitations.

I feel bad that my previous post caused some people to get the wrong impression of one of my favorite authors. In "Everything is spiritual" says Joan Tollifson. I heartily agree I shared quotations from one of Tollifson's books that were unbalanced in a certain sense.

While I understood that Tollifson is a big fan of reason and science, taken by itself this paragraph could be taken to be a putdown of reason and science.

Our brain sees patterns where none actually exist. It turns chaos into order. But the order is imaginary. We are always clueless. Life is an unresolvable, incomprehensible, indeterminate mystery. And that's not a horrible or depressing thought, but rather, a liberating and beautiful realization.

From a neuroscientific perspective, Tollifson is absolutely correct. The human brain is incapable of perceiving reality directly, being encased in the dark confine of our skull. So the brain makes best guesses as to what is happening in the world (and also within the mind) from inferences based on current perceptions and past experiences.

The brain is a prediction machine. It fashions order out of the raw material of life, in somewhat the same fashion as several American election models that I follow use mathematics and statistics based on political polls, economic data, prior election results, and such to come up with predictions (updated daily) as to the chance Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be elected president next month. 

The actual reality obviously is much different from what those models are able to capture. I know that. But when I see that Harris is leading Trump by 57% to 43% in Nate Silver's prediction model, I'm pleased because I want Harris to win. It's easy for me to forget that Silver's model is a crude reflection of political reality, and could be far off the mark -- as his model was in 2016, when it predicted that Hillary Clinton had a much greater chance of winning and Trump won.

So Tollifson is simply reminding us that models aren't reality. Whatever conceptual models we have in our mind about the way things are, the one thing that's certain about those models is that they're flawed. While correct in certain ways, they're incorrect in other ways. Problem is, it can be devilishly difficult for us to know the difference, in part because no one, absolutely no one, has a perfect grasp of reality.

(Assuming such is even possible, when I suspect it isn't.)

Here's some additional Tollifson quotations that give a fuller picture of her attitude toward thinking and reason. As I said in my previous post, I don't agree 100% with what Tollifson says in her writings, but in general I believe she is right on in her viewpoint. This quotation is from Death: The End of Self-Improvement, the book I quoted in that previous post.

Self-improvement is rigid and perfectionistic, driven by beliefs, expectations and old answers, while genuine transformation is flexible, open to new discoveries and rooted in not-knowing. Genuine transformation listens for what life itself wants, while self-improvement imagines that "I" know how everything "should" be. 

Self-improvement is judgmental, self-righteous and narrow-minded, while happiness and real change are the release of all that. Self-improvement is primarily thought-based, while genuine transformation emerges from aware presence. Thought divides; awareness joins. Thought is dualistic; awareness is nondual.

Of course, there is a place for intelligent thinking -- reason, intellect and analysis are marvelous tools. I'm not in any way disparaging thinking. I have great appreciation for the scientific method and for human reason. But awareness is upstream from thought. And in many situations, thought is the wrong instrument.

These quotations are from Nothing to Grasp.

When we try to figure out "the meaning of life" or "the nature of reality," or when we try to come up with a conceptual understanding of Consciousness, Totality, God, or the Ground of Being, we inevitably end up frustrated and confused. Any conceptual picture of reality is always subject to doubt, and no metaphysical formulation ever satisfies our deep longing for Truth.

What satisfies that deep longing of the heart is the falling away of the attempt to make sense of everything. Of course, that doesn't mean we don't still make relative sense of things in a functional way in daily life. But we stop trying to take hold of Totality, or grasp the Ground of Being, or figure out the meaning of life.

Instead, we relax into simply being life. We learn to recognize (to see, to sense) when we're beginning to grasp or fixate, and in that recognition, quite naturally there is an ability to relax and let go. When we stop trying to figure it all out, we discover that it doesn't need to be figured out, and in fact, can't be figured out. 

When we stop desperately trying to get a grip, we find nothing is lacking and there is nothing to grasp.

...Thought and language are wonderful tools. But words are inherently abstract and representational. Even when they are trying not to, they inevitably tend to freeze and divide the seamless fluidity of life, creating the mirage-like conceptual appearance of separate, independent forms that persist through time. So whenever we try to think about life, we tend to get easily confused. 

We get confused because we are thinking about and trying to reconcile "things" that don't actually exist. Whatever verbal formulation we use to describe reality is never quite right. Thought can never get hold of the actuality of this-here-now. Reality itself is too fluid, too immediate, too dynamic to be divided up and caught in the conceptual net of words.

If we say, "This is it," the words create the very split they attempt to point beyond. If we say "All is One," it is one too many. If we call it "nothing," it seems to deny the undeniable presence of everything. If we assert that "there is nothing to do," it seems to overlook the necessity of doing whatever we are moved by life to do. If we assert "there is something to do," it makes it sound as if something else is required in order to be what we already are.

"Everything is spiritual" says Joan Tollifson. I heartily agree.

When I've got a hunger for a meal of some tasty spiritual wisdom that appeals to my heart as well as my mind, and is free of unhealthy ingredients like dogmatism, holier-than-thou pretensions, and supernatural fantasy, lately I've been turning toward writings by Joan Tollifson.

Here's excerpts from her book, Death: The End of Self-Improvement, that appealed to me in my most recent Tollifson reading. I don't agree 100% with everything she says, but her overall thesis strikes me as sound.

This radical perspective points relentlessly to the choiceless nature of reality and the absence of anyone running the show. Everything is a spontaneous and automatic happening that can never be captured or grasped by words, concepts or formulations. 

Our brain sees patterns where none actually exist. It turns chaos into order. But the order is imaginary. We are always clueless. Life is an unresolvable, incomprehensible, indeterminate mystery. And that's not a horrible or depressing thought, but rather, a liberating and beautiful realization.

In discovering our complete and absolute powerlessness, our utter lack of control, there is immediately great peace, true freedom and unconditional love. It is the freedom for everything to be just as it is. It is not the peace that is the opposite of war or upset, but rather, it is the peace that includes war and upset, the peace that is at peace with war and even with our resistance to war.

It is the unconditional love that accepts everything. In this discovery of choiceless unicity, there is immediately compassion for ourself and all beings, knowing that in every moment, we are all doing the only thing possible. No wave can ever go off in a direction other than the one in which the whole ocean is moving.

...Paradoxically, though, every time I've gone through therapy or delved deeper into some spiritual path or non-path, what has always emerged front and center at the root of it all is the willingness to be as I am; to be, on the human level, in some sense imperfect, incomplete and unresolved; and to see that this very person, warts and all, is already whole and complete; that this bodymind and everything it thinks and wants and does is a movement of the whole universe.

Rather than trying to reach some ultimate perfection of "me," or some imagined supreme enlightenment, it turns out that true happiness is a matter of simply being Here-Now, which is actually unavoidable; but what can fall away or no longer be believed are the thoughts and stories about this present happening, the interpretations, judgments, and ideals. 

Even when people take up meditation to reduce stress and improve well-being, as many people do nowadays, even then, they soon learn that the usual result-oriented, end-gaining approach of trying really hard to get somewhere else -- seeking, resisting, evaluating, judging, and so on -- doesn't work.

Meditation, even as a wellness practice, begins with allowing everything to be as it is. In a way, even to say "allowing" or "accepting" is saying too much. Everything already is allowed to be as it is -- obviously! -- because it is as it is. So it's more like simply acknowledging how it is, being present experiencing, which we already are. 

It's not a doing, in other words. It's more like not doing anything extra. Relaxing. Being what you cannot not be. And as the pathless path unfolds, everything is discovered to be an expression of this radiant presence that we are. Nothing needs to be pushed away or kept out.

Everything is spiritual.

I prefer honest sinners to deceptive saints

Let's be clear.

I don't believe in the notion of sin, which is an offense against God. That's ridiculous, since there's no persuasive evidence that God even exists, nor, obviously, that anyone knows what the nonexistent God likes and doesn't like.

I also don't believe in the notion of saints, who are believed to have a closeness to God, for the same reason.

So when I refer to sinners and saints in the title of this post, I'm speaking in a secular sense of bad and good people -- where "bad" and "good" are actions or qualities that a certain culture or society has determined deserve those terms.

My previous post, "Morality has evolutionary roots, but goodness still feels like a choice," got me thinking about something in a New Yorker article that I included excerpts from.

We all depend on trust, yet it works in tricky ways. On the one hand, we trust people who are guided by consistent ethical precepts. I’d rather go to dinner with someone deeply opposed to stealing than a jerk who pockets my valuables as soon as I get up to pee.

On the other hand, we’re turned off when people’s commitments seem calculated. The ascent of terms like “slacktivism,” “virtue signalling,” and “moral grandstanding” bespeaks a frustration with do-gooders motivated more by acclaim than by an internal moral compass. The idea is that, if you’re in it for the reputational perks, you can’t be relied on when those perks vanish.

That's true, but I'm bothered less by how a moralistic do-gooder is motivated than by the basic fact of their calculated, rather than natural, approach to interacting with other people. 

I had a lot of experience with this during the thirty-five years I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious group which taught that the Five Deadly Sins -- lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism -- are to be done away with in order to pursue God-realization. 

Aside from the fact that everybody I've ever come across in my 75 years of living has manifested those supposed sins, including some extremely kind-hearted people, it irritated me (oh, no, anger!) when a fellow RSSB member would act in an artificial fashion that seemed scripted rather than spontaneous.

They might even take on the gestures and speaking style of the RSSB guru, as if behaving outwardly like a supposed saint would make them into one. Sometimes I'd feel like grabbing them by their shoulders, shaking them, and saying loudly, "Just act like a normal human being! Be yourself!"

I remember seeing an episode of the 60 Minutes show many years ago that featured a convicted murderer who was being interviewed in prison. He said something like, "Yeah, I killed a guy. That's a fact. It's why I'm in this place." 

His honesty about the crime he committed struck me as more laudable than what our president at the time, who I think was George W. Bush, was deceptively saying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a lie that was being used to justify our invasion of that country.

Back in my RSSB days, my wife and I would host a Christmas gathering of people in our local group ("sangat") where we'd enjoy a potluck and sharing White Elephant gifts that were things people brought that they wanted to get rid of, being ugly, useless, or whatever.

The best part of the evening for me was when most people had left and there were just a few of us sitting around talking. That's when things got more real. We all were pretty natural to begin with, but after chit-chatting for several hours there'd be a desire to open up even more.

Someone might say, "I've never said this to anyone before, but..." That would grab our attention. Ooh, go on, please, go on. The revelation wouldn't be as dramatic as having killed someone. It'd just be something honest and revealing about who the person actually was in private, versus how the person appeared in public -- a difference almost everybody engages in, me certainly included.

No matter what was revealed, even if it went against the precepts of RSSB, everybody still hanging around in our living room would be fine with that. We valued honesty over deception, speaking a dark truth about ourselves over putting on a fake smiley-face.

Sure, there's a time and place for absolute transparency, and a time and place for putting on a false front that disguises who we really are. I'm simply saying that I prefer people who are as natural as possible as often as possible. That allows me to feel like I can be equally natural around them.

Morality has evolutionary roots, but goodness still feels like a choice

Recently someone complained in a comment on this blog that another person was leaving comments under their name. I was asked to do something about it. Problem is, that's hard to do, since my blogging service, unlike Facebook, doesn't have a way for a user to claim a distinct identity. 

So if you're concerned about this happening to you, my advice is to always include the same email address when you post a comment. The email address only is visible to me, while your name is visible to everyone. Then if someone has appropriated your name, not innocently but to deceive, I can tell from previous comments associated with your email address which comments come from you, and I'll delete the offending comments because I think it's wrong to impersonate someone like that.

But why do I think that's wrong? Most people feel the same way. We like our individuality and we want others to be able to express their own individuality. Again, why? What makes something seem wrong rather than right, good rather than bad?

That's a meaty subject. However, since I believe that killing animals for food is wrong (I've been a vegetarian since I was nineteen), I'll say that's a tofu'y subject. Yet others love to eat animals. Are they right and I'm wrong? Naturally I think the reverse. But why?

You're not going to find the answer in this blog post. Still, a great article in the September 16, 2024 issue of The New Yorker, "The Post-Moral Age: If conscience is merely a biological artifact, must we give up on goodness?," discusses that question in some interesting ways. The online article has a different title.
Download Are Your Morals Too Good to Be True? | The New Yorker

I think you'd enjoy reading the five-page article. Here's some excerpts that will give you a feel for the gist of what Singh has to say. He starts by talking about his undergraduate research studying burying beetles in Colorado.

Back in college, my classmates had high-minded ambitions like fighting climate change, becoming human-rights lawyers, and starting microfinance firms to alleviate poverty. To spend time with books and beetles in wildflower country seemed the pinnacle of self-indulgence.

Adding to the internal tension was something I’d observed among my beetles: the spectre of evolved selfishness. What looked like coöperation was, I discovered, laced with sexual conflict. The female beetles, when they had a size advantage, ejected their male partners; the males evidently stuck around less to help than to insure future mating opportunities.

Where I first saw biparental collaboration was instead a complicated waltz of organisms seeking to perpetuate their own interests. Was I one of them—another gene machine bent on favoring itself?

I had, to that point, considered myself a mostly decent person, moved by empathy and committed to self-expression. Was all this actually vanity and delusion, selfishness masquerading as morality? The prospect was unsettling.

So I hid away in a one-room library that smelled faintly of old textbooks and the alcohol used to preserve animal specimens, and there I started to work out a response. We’re evolved organisms, I figured, but we’re also an intelligent, cultural species capable of living by ideals that transcend our egoistic origins.

What emerged from my musings was a personal ideology, at the core of which was an appreciation of creation—including artistic and scientific work. Even an awkward scribble, I supposed, expresses an incomprehensibly epic causal history, which includes a maker, the maker’s parents, the quality of the air in the room, and so on, until it expands to encompass the entire universe.

Goodness could be reclaimed, I thought. I would draw and write and do science but as acts of memorialization—the duties of an apostle of being. I called the ideology Celebrationism, and, early in 2012, I started to codify it in a manic, sprawling novel of that name.

I had grown up a good Sikh boy: I wore a turban, didn’t cut my hair, didn’t drink or smoke. The idea of a god that acted in the world had long seemed implausible, yet it wasn’t until I started studying evolution in earnest that the strictures of religion and of everyday conventions began to feel brittle.

By my junior year of college, I thought of myself as a materialist, open-minded but skeptical of anything that smacked of the supernatural. Celebrationism came soon after. It expanded from an ethical road map into a life philosophy, spanning aesthetics, spirituality, and purpose.

By the end of my senior year, I was painting my fingernails, drawing swirling mehndi tattoos on my limbs, and regularly walking without shoes, including during my college graduation. “Why, Manvir?” my mother asked, quietly, and I launched into a riff about the illusory nature of normativity and about how I was merely a fancy organism produced by cosmic mega-forces.

...When, the following year, I started a Ph.D. in human evolutionary biology at Harvard, I saw the decision as in service of my Celebrationist creed. I could devote myself to meditating on the opportune swerves that produced us.

I was mistaken. Celebrationism died soon afterward.

Just as observation and a dose of evolutionary logic revealed male burying beetles not as attentive fathers but as possessive mate guarders, the natural and behavioral sciences deflated my dreamy credo, exposing my lofty aspirations as performance and self-deception. I struggled, unsuccessfully, to construct a new framework for moral behavior which didn’t look like self-interest in disguise. A profound cynicism took hold.

Then Singh provides an outline of skepticism about objective morality, referring to Michel de Montaigne, David Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche.

Nietzsche’s response to a godless world was a moral makeover: individuals were to forge their own precepts and act in accordance with them. More than a century later, such forays have matured into an individualist morality that has become widespread.

We behave morally, we often say, not because of doctrine but because of our higher-order principles, such as resisting cruelty or upholding the equality of all humans. Rather than valuing human life because an omnipotent godhead commands it, or because our houses of worship instruct it, we do so because we believe it is right.

At its core, this view of morality assumes a kind of moral integrity. Although some people may embrace principles for self-interested ends, the story goes, genuine altruism is possible through reasoned reflection and an earnest desire to be ethical. I told myself a version of this story in the Rockies: rummage through your soul and you can find personally resonant principles that inspire good behavior.

Singh uses the views of Peter Singer regarding animal liberation to illustrate how we expect that others will do the right thing by learning about the suffering of others, in this case nonhuman animals. But...

From an evolutionary perspective, this could seem an odd expectation.

Humans have been fashioned by natural selection to pursue sex, status, and material resources. We are adept at looking out for ourselves. We help people, yes, but the decision to give is influenced by innumerable selfish considerations, including how close we are to a recipient, whether they’ve helped us before, how physically attractive they are, whether they seem responsible for their misfortune, and who might be watching.

A Martian observer might, accordingly, have expected Singer’s arguments to focus less on the horrific conditions of overcrowded pig farms and instead to appeal to our hedonic urges—more along the lines of “Veganism makes you sexy” or “People who protest animal experimentation have more friends and nicer houses than their apathetic rivals.”

Singh then talks about how views on morality changed after he started his doctoral work and had conversations with Moshe Hoffman, a postdoctoral researcher fixated on the nature of trust.

We all depend on trust, yet it works in tricky ways. On the one hand, we trust people who are guided by consistent ethical precepts. I’d rather go to dinner with someone deeply opposed to stealing than a jerk who pockets my valuables as soon as I get up to pee.

On the other hand, we’re turned off when people’s commitments seem calculated. The ascent of terms like “slacktivism,” “virtue signalling,” and “moral grandstanding” bespeaks a frustration with do-gooders motivated more by acclaim than by an internal moral compass. The idea is that, if you’re in it for the reputational perks, you can’t be relied on when those perks vanish.

...Moshe argued that humans deal with this dilemma by adopting moral principles. Through learning or natural selection, or some combination, we’ve developed a paradoxical strategy for making friends. We devote ourselves to moral ends in order to garner trust. Which morals we espouse depend on whose trust we are courting.

...His account identifies showmanship, conscious or otherwise, in ostensibly principled acts. We talk about moral principles as if they were inviolate, but we readily consider trade-offs and deviate from those principles when we can get away with it. Philip Tetlock, who works at the intersection of political science and psychology, labels our commitments “pseudo-sacred.”

Sure, some people would die for their principles, yet they often abandon them once they gain power and no longer rely on trust. In "Human Rights in Africa" (2017), the historian Bonny Ibhawoh showed that post-colonial African dictators often started their careers as dissidents devoted to civil liberties.

....Invested as I was in my own goodness, whether achieved or aspirational, I found Moshe’s ideas both alarming and mesmeric. To engage with them was to look in a mirror and find a sinister creature staring back. The more I sought Moshe out—first by taking a course he co-taught, then by meeting up for Indian food after class, then by working as his teaching assistant—the more I felt trapped within my self-interest.

Celebrationism was exposed as a beautiful lie. The search for personally resonant principles was reinterpreted as a tactic not to overcome self-interest but to advance it. Any dignified motivations that had once held sway—making art for art’s sake, acting to minimize suffering—became smoke screens to distract others from my selfishness.

Here were hard truths that I felt compelled to confront. I wanted to escape the performance, to adopt values for reasons other than their social utility, but even that urge, I recognized, reflected the same strategic impulse to appear good and consistent. It was like forcing yourself to wake up from a dream only to realize that you’re still dreaming.

This sounds kind of disheartening, but in the end Singh arrives at a place that preserves both his scientific integrity and humanness. 

In recent decades, all sorts of philosophers have added to the pool of adaptive theories about morality. Allan Gibbard argues that moral statements (“Killing is bad”) actually express attitudes (“I don’t like killing”), allowing us to coördinate on shared prescriptions (“No one shall kill”). Philip Kitcher sees ethics as an ever-evolving project invented by our remote ancestors and continually refined to help societies flourish.

Richard Joyce has proposed that moral judgments help keep us out of trouble. Given normal human hedonism, we may struggle to stop ourselves from, say, stealing a brownie; the feeling that it’s morally wrong provides us an emotional bulwark. Non-moral explanations like these, whatever their differences, obviate talk of moral truths, construing them as dreamlike delusions.

...What troubled me was less the notion that morality was our own creation than the implication that our motives were suspect—that evolutionarily ingrained egoism permeated our desires, including the desire to overcome that selfishness. Sincerity, I concluded, was dead. Just as the natural sciences had killed the Christian God, I thought, the social and behavioral sciences had made appeals to virtuous motivations preposterous.

I became skeptical of all moral opinions, but especially of the most impassioned ones, which was a problem, because I was dating someone who had a lot of them. (It didn’t work out.) A close friend, a punk physicist with whom I often went dancing late at night, found my newfound cynicism hard to relate to, and we drifted apart.

Many theorists are skeptical of such skepticism. When I asked people on X how they have dealt with evolutionary debunking, Oliver Scott Curry, a social scientist at Oxford and the research director at Kindlab, which studies the practice of kindness, warned me not to confuse the selfishness of genes with the nature of our motivations, which apparently are more gallant.

He was echoing a distinction often drawn between a behavior’s “ultimate” causes, which concern why it evolved, and its “proximate” causes, which include psychological and physiological mechanisms. The cognition underpinning moral judgment may have evolved to make us look good, these scholars grant, but that doesn’t count against its sincerity.

...Such arguments make sense to some degree. An impulse can exist because of its evolutionary utility but still be heartfelt. The love I feel for my spouse functions to propagate my genes, but that doesn’t lessen the strength of my devotion. Why couldn’t this shift in perspective rescue goodness for me? A major reason is that the proximate-ultimate distinction leaves intact the unsavory aspects of human motivation.

As anyone who has spent more than twenty minutes on social media can attest, humans are remarkably attentive to which moral proclamations garner esteem and attention. We weigh the status implications of claiming different principles. It’s true that we often assure ourselves otherwise and even internalize positions once we espouse them enough. Yet this fact didn’t redeem moral sincerity for me; it corrupted it.

...How does one exist in a post-moral world? What do we do when the desire to be good is exposed as a self-serving performance and moral beliefs are recast as merely brain stuff? I responded by turning to a kind of nihilism, yet this is far from the only reaction. We could follow the Mentawai, favoring the language of transaction over virtue.

Or we can carry on as if nothing has changed. Richard Joyce, in his new book, “Morality: From Error to Fiction,” advocates such an approach. His “moral fictionalism” entails maintaining our current way of talking while recognizing that a major benefit of this language is that it makes you likable, despite referring to nothing real. If you behave the way I did in grad school, going on about the theatre of morality, you will, he suggests, only attract censure and wariness. Better to blend in.

Intellectually, I find the proposal hard to swallow. The idea of cosplaying moral commitment for social acceptance would surely magnify whatever dissonance I already feel. Still, a decade after my first meeting with Moshe, experience forces me to acknowledge Joyce’s larger point. It’s easy to inhabit the fiction.

I still accept that I am a selfish organism produced by a cosmic mega-force, drifting around in a bedlam of energy and matter and, in most respects, not so very different from the beetles I scrutinized during that summer in Colorado. I still see the power in Moshe’s game-theory models. Traces of unease linger. But I no longer feel unmoored. A sense of meaning has reëstablished itself.

Tressed, turbanned, and teetotalling, I am, at least by all appearances, still a good Sikh. I have become a teacher, a husband, and a father to a new baby daughter. When she smiles, a single dimple appears in her left cheek. Her existence feels more ecstatic and celebratory than any ideology I could have conceived, and I hope that she’ll one day grow up to be empathetic and aware of others’ suffering. I have moral intuitions, sometimes impassioned ones. I try to do right by people, and, on most days, I think I do an O.K. job. I dream on.

We cling to our center even while saying "I am nothing"

I'm a fan of Sam Harris' Waking Up app, which I subscribe to on my iPhone. Usually I just listen to Harris' daily guided meditations, a habit I've had for quite a few years.

But occasionally I'll see a talk by someone else that's featured on the app. That's how I started listening to "Life Without a Center" by Adyashanti. (There's lots of free material on that website, along with lots of material you have to pay for.)

I've read one of his books and recall that I liked it. Wikipedia says that his original name was Stephen Gray. He became Adyashanti ("primordial peace") with the approval of his Zen master after he started teaching. In 2023 he stopped teaching "due to PTSD resulting from a very long period of intense physical pain." 

I've still got 20 minutes left to listen to on the 52 minute talk by Adyashanti. Here's some key thoughts from the portion of the talk I heard this morning. His style appeals to me. Adyashanti sounds sincere, humble, and straightforward. 

Control. This had never occurred to me before, but it makes a lot of sense. Control can't last. When we try to control our mind through concentration, a mantra, positive thinking, visualization, or any other means, that may work for a while, but every means of control -- whether mental or physical -- has its limits.

Why? Because control takes effort, an expenditure of energy. Eventually we get tired, worn out, unable to continue the effort of control. Ups and downs in our spiritual practice then occur, just as an attempt to run a marathon, even if it succeeds, necessarily ends with exhaustion. 

Meditation. He says that meditation is always happening. There's no need to try to bring the feeling we have in meditation into everyday life. Our everyday life should be identical to meditation. Sam Harris makes a similar point.

We shouldn't feel like the time we spend on a cushion or chair meditating in a formal way is different from the time we spend washing the dishes, driving to work, or talking with a friend. Awareness of the here and now is always possible. Meditation isn't anything special. It's just another opportunity to be vividly  aware of what's present inside and outside of us. 

Center. I don't recall Adyashanti speaking of ego. Instead he says "center." We cling to being a center, the pivot around which everything in our life revolves. I totally related to his remark that even if we say "I am nothing," this is a way to show both other people and ourself how elevated our spirituality is.

We're so attached to our center, we keep it strong and fortified even (or especially) as we profess our devotion to whatever religion, mystical pursuit, or spiritual path we're following. The only difference is that the manifestations of our center-clinging become more subtle as we learn how to appear like a egoless being even as we become proud of how egoless we supposedly are becoming.

Illusion. He says that illusion is very smart, very clever. I'm assuming that Adyashanti is referring to the illusion of being a distinct separate self possessing free will. At least that's how I see the core illusions from a Buddhist perspective. 

From a scientific perspective, it is frequently said that evolution through natural selection doesn't have a goal of truth, it has a goal of survival of the organism. (Not that evolution really has goals; this is just a manner of speaking about the outcome of natural selection.) 

After I finish listening to the rest of the talk, I'll share Adyashanti's final remarks about living without a center. Regarding clinging to our center, here's an excerpt from a 2005 blog post. (RSSB refers to Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the religious organization I belonged to for 35 years.)

I’ve been to RSSB gatherings where I’ve thanked someone for giving me a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Instead of the volunteer simply saying, “You’re welcome,” I hear: “Oh no, brother. Please don’t thank me. I’m doing everything on behalf of the guru. He is the real doer, not me. I am just an instrument in his hands.”

I think to myself, “Hmmmm. This humble selfless instrument standing before me sure sounds like a self-willed someone, given the lengthy response I got to my pithy ‘thank you.’” Why can’t religious people act as naturally as non-religious people?

Meridians in Chinese medicine have no basis in fact, just superstition

Over on my HinesSight blog yesterday, I posted "Some life lessons from a Tai Chi seminar."

These were some of the insights I got from a special three-hour class my Tai Chi instructor, Warren, put on for five students who are especially interested in the martial side of Tai Chi, as contrasted with the energetic/exercise side.

During the seminar Warren, who used to teach classes in East-West Medicine at a nearby college, talked about the meridians that are part of Chinese medicine. This is how a Wikipedia article about meridians starts off. 

The meridian system (simplified Chinese: 经络; traditional Chinese: 經絡; pinyin: jīngluò, also called channel network) is a pseudoscientific concept from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that alleges meridians are paths through which the life-energy known as "qi" (ch'i) flows.

Meridians are not real anatomical structures: scientists have found no evidence that supports their existence.  One historian of medicine in China says that the term is "completely unsuitable and misguided, but nonetheless it has become a standard translation." Major proponents of their existence have not come to any consensus as to how they might work or be tested in a scientific context.

I'd heard Warren describe meridians several times before. He knows their names and where they supposedly are in the human body. But I don't recall him ever talking about how someone can prove that they exist, or why they're relevant to Tai Chi practice.

From what I can tell, Tai Chi supposedly facilitates the movement of qi/chi in the body, as this web site says.

Tai Chi and Qigong, when taught as mindfulness relaxation therapies can help clear tension blocks, which facilitates a natural healthful flow of Qi or life energy, as well as blood and lymph circulation. Chinese Acupuncture involves 12 Main Meridians, such as the "liver meridian" the "lung meridian" the "kidney meridian" so the gentle massaging of the body, which sets Tai Chi and Qigong apart from other exercises, results also in "massaging the internal organs" and supporting their function and the flow of Qi, or life energy.

The problem I have with meridians is basically the same problem I have with any form of unproven supernatural belief. I include meridians in the broad category of supernatural belief because while life and energy obviously are real, "life energy" in the sense of qi isn't.

Here's part of what the Science-Based Medicine web site says about Chinese medicine:

One of the themes of science-based medicine is to be suspicious of any form of medicine that is not science-based. In other words, beware of dodgy qualifiers placed before “medicine,” such as: “alternative”, “integrative”, or “complementary” – those that imply that something other than science or evidence is being used to determine which treatments are safe and effective.

I would also include “traditional Chinese” medicine in the dodgy category. A recent article defending Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) provides, ironically, an excellent argument for the rejection of TCM as a valid form of medicine. The authors, Jingqing Hua and Baoyan Liub, engage in a number of logical fallacies that are worth exploring.

...There is no evidence that the meridians actually exist. At the risk of sounding redundant, they are as made up and fictional as the ether, flogistum, Bigfoot, and unicorns. The linking of qi and blood is reflective of the fact that the notion of qi is historically tied to blood, and techniques such as acupuncture and cupping were also closely related to bleeding techniques that we are more familiar with from Galenic medicine.

Here's the thing. If meridians exist, seemingly they would have some effects in the human body. Those effects should be evident through scientific experimentation. Or some other means. But I couldn't find convincing evidence of this sort. 

You may be thinking, what about acupuncture? Well, acupuncture has been found to relieve some types of pain about as well as over-the-counter medications like Tylenol. But there isn't a lot of evidence for the general effectiveness of acupuncture, according to a Scientific American story, "Research Casts Doubt on the Value of Acupuncture." 

Studies have found no meaningful difference between acupuncture and a wide range of sham treatments. Whether investigators penetrate the skin or not, use needles or toothpicks, target the particular locations on the body cited by acupuncturists or random ones, the same proportion of patients experience more or less the same degree of pain relief (the most common condition for which acupuncture is administered and the most well researched). “We have no evidence that [acupuncture] is anything more than theatrical placebo,” says Harriet Hall, a retired family physician and U.S. Air Force flight surgeon who has studied, and long been a critic of, alternative medicine.

I've had about a dozen acupuncture treatments for sciatica pain in my right leg. After the first couple of treatments, my pain was much better. However, I have no idea if acupuncture was the cause. The way I express this to my acupuncturist is "I'm not sure if I believe in acupuncture, but I definitely believe in the placebo effect."

She's fine with my attitude, as she never mentions anything associated with Chinese medicine, including meridians. She knows that acupuncture benefits her clients. If that benefit is partly or wholly because of the placebo effect, great. Whatever works. So I keep going for more treatments. Have one tomorrow, in fact. (I wrote about my acupuncture treatments in "I benefitted from my sessions at Salem's Innerhealth Acupuncture Clinic.")

I feel the same way about meridians. My Tai Chi instructor clearly believes in them. I have no problem with that, just as I have no problem with some people in my class being religious. Whatever works for them. If I'm asked whether I believe in meridians or qi or God, I'll answer "No." However, I understand why others believe in entities for which there is no demonstrable evidence. I used to be such a believer myself. 

It's only when someone claims that their faith-based belief is true, and expects me to share that belief, that I'll defend my skepticism. Meridians seems to be an example of an unfounded belief that rarely causes harm, though if someone chooses Chinese medicine to cure an aggressive cancer, they definitely are putting themselves at great risk.

Search for quantum gravity shows why science is so much better than religion

I love science. I don't love religion, but I don't hate it either. Mostly I give little thought to religion, aside from when I write about its shortcomings on this blog. 

Science appeals to me because I admire its dedication to truth, something that can't said about religion without being, well, untruthful. Yes, science often gets something wrong. However, rather than being upset about this, science views error as an opportunity to learn from the mistake and seek truth in another direction.

Religion, on the other hand, abhors the possibility that what is considered to be true, actually isn't. Blind faith is a virtue for religion, while it is a vice for science. Recognizing that what was viewed as true actually is false will earn you the title of heretic in religion; science will offer you acclaim. 

One reason I subscribe to Scientific American is to be able to read about how science is practiced. Even when I have difficulty grasping some of the content in an article, I always enjoy being exposed to the nitty-gritty methods of scientific inquiry, and how scientists view their search for knowledge. 

The September 2024 issue has a fascinating article by Nick Huggett and Carlo Rovelli, "Quantum Spacetime." Huggett is a philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science. Rovelli is a theoretical physicist. Here's a PDF file of the article with the online title.
Download Do Space and Time Follow Quantum Rules? These Mind-Bending Experiments Aim to Find Out |

The basic problem being addressed here is fairly easy to understand. It's a big one. What's the foundational nature of reality?

We live in a universe with three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. Space and time appear very different, but the genius of Albert Einstein revealed that they aren't. They are aspects of a single whole, a spacetime continuum. His theory of relativity describes how this works in equations that I'm clueless about on a mathematical level, yet admire on a conceptual level.

Einstein showed that gravity is the result of curved spacetime. The wonderful way this can be expressed is shown in the boldfaced passage below from the above linked Stanford web site.

Einstein eventually identified the property of spacetime which is responsible for gravity as its curvature. Space and time in Einstein's universe are no longer flat (as implicitly assumed by Newton) but can [be] pushed and pulled, stretched and warped by matter. Gravity feels strongest where spacetime is most curved, and it vanishes where spacetime is flat. This is the core of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is often summed up in words as follows: "matter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved spacetime tells matter how to move".

A standard way to illustrate this idea is to place a bowling ball (representing a massive object such as the sun) onto a stretched rubber sheet (representing spacetime). If a marble is placed onto the rubber sheet, it will roll toward the bowling ball, and may even be put into "orbit" around the bowling ball. This occurs, not because the smaller mass is "attracted" by a force emanating from the larger one, but because it is traveling along a surface which has been deformed by the presence of the larger mass.

In the same way gravitation in Einstein's theory arises not as a force propagating through spacetime, but rather as a feature of spacetime itself. According to Einstein, your weight on earth is due to the fact that your body is traveling through warped spacetime!

This is so cool. It boggles my mind, but I enjoy the feeling of boggling. Yet at least we can picture spacetime in everyday terms such as a stretched rubber sheet. Einstein's spacetime is continuous with no gaps. This puts it at odds with the other great theory of what reality is all about, quantum mechanics. 

Quantum systems come in bits of matter and energy. Like the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics is exceedingly well proven. So much so, most physicists believe that in order to reconcile the continuous spacetime picture Einstein gave us with the discrete nature of quantum mechanics, somehow gravity needs to become quantized. 

Here's how the Scientific American article starts out:

There is a glaring gap in our knowledge of the physical world: none of our well-­established theories describe gravity’s quantum nature. Yet physicists expect that this quantum nature is essential for explaining extreme situations such as the very early universe and the deep interior of black holes. The need to understand it is called the problem of “quantum gravity.”

The established classical concept of gravity is Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This spectacularly successful theory has correctly predicted phenomena from the bending of light and the orbit of Mercury to black holes and gravitational waves. It teaches us that the geometry of space and time—spacetime—is determined by gravity. So when we talk about the quantum behavior of gravity, we’re really talking about the quantum behavior of spacetime.

We don’t currently have an established theory of quantum gravity, but we do have some tentative theories. Among them, loop quantum gravity (which one of us, Rovelli, helped to develop) and string theory are two leading contenders. The former predicts that the fabric of spacetime is woven from a network of tiny loops, whereas the latter posits that particles are fundamentally vibrating strings.

Testing these theories is difficult because we can’t study the early universe or black hole interiors in a laboratory. Physicists have mostly assumed that experiments that could directly tell us something about quantum gravity require technology that is many years away.

This situation might be changing. Recent developments suggest it may be possible to perform laboratory experiments that will reveal something about the quantum behavior of gravity. This potential is extremely exciting, and it has raised real enthusiasm among theoretical and experimental physicists, who are actively trying to develop the means to carry out the investigations. The proposed experiments could test the predictions of quantum gravity theories and provide support for the assumptions they’re based on.

The experiments all involve events happening at low energies, where the predictions of strings, loops, and the like agree, so they aren’t going to tell us which specific theory of quantum gravity is correct. Still, ­experimental evidence that gravity is actually quantized would be groundbreaking.

We already have plenty of observations about gravity’s effects on the quantum behavior of matter. Albert Einstein’s theory works fine in these situations, from stellar dynamics, to the cosmological formation of galaxy clusters, all the way to laboratory experiments on the effect of Earth’s gravity on quantum systems. But in all these scenarios, gravity itself behaves in a way that is consistent with classical physics; its quantum features are irrelevant. What’s much more difficult is to observe phenomena in which we expect gravity to behave quantum mechanically.

I won't attempt to describe how the authors propose carrying out those observations. Read the entire article via the PDF file to learn this. What I want to emphasize is the end of the article, where Huggett and Rovelli speak about the "momentous" effect if the current foundation of physics were to be overturned by future experiments.

You won't find anything like this in religious writings. There's no way religious leaders would say, "We're anticipating the possibility that God will be found to be a fiction."

There is still a long way to go over the next few years to carry out such trials (and there would be an even longer path toward enacting our own thought experiment). But if they can be successfully accomplished, they will test the low-energy domain on which almost all theories agree.

If researchers find evidence for space­time in superposition, then they will have the first direct evidence for the basic assumptions of our theories of quantum gravity. We will substantially rule out the possibility that gravity is classical, a significant and previously unexpected step forward. More than that, experimentalists would have reached a new horizon of the physical world, producing a region of spacetime that is observably quantum in a macroscopic laboratory. At last physics will have concretely entered a realm that for now remains a land of hypothesis.

If signs of superposition are not observed, the experiments will instead support speculations that gravity is intrinsically classical, confounding the expectations of much of the physics community and plunging a huge amount of work from the past 40 years into crisis. Such a result would require a significant revision of our understanding of the world and of the connection between quantum theory and gravity.

In either case, the effect would be momentous.

How to have less of a distracted mind

As evidenced by the title of the first blog post I wrote six days ago about The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World, a book by Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen -- "Why repeating a mantra during daily activities doesn't make much sense" -- I'm interested in the spiritual implications of the book, even though the authors pay zero attention to this.

They're concerned with how three modern innovations, the Internet, smart phones, and social media, are screwing up our ability to concentrate, though it isn't as if these innovations are forcing us to obey their whims.

For we are willing co-conspirators in the theft of our undivided attention, being driven to do this by foraging rules evolution has imprinted in our minds which have become turned into approaches guiding our foraging for information, rather than food.

The authors say that in addition to attention, an undistracted mind also requires good working memory and goal management. They present lots of research showing that excessive use of the Internet, smart phones, and social media causes us to shift our attention rapidly instead of keeping it focused on a single subject. 

Multi-tasking, which they say isn't really possible, for what we're doing is rapidly shifting attention between several tasks, like watching TV and texting a friend, not only messes up our attention but also working memory and our ability to choose the most important goals to work on.

This passage has implications for meditation in general and mindfulness in particular. 

One interesting aspect of this penchant for combining tasks is that we seem to have lost the ability to single task. Glance around a restaurant, look at people walking on a city street, pay attention to people waiting in line for a movie or the theatre, and you will see busily tapping fingers.

We act as though we are no longer interested in or able to stay idle and simply do nothing. We appear to care more about the people who are available through our devices that those who are right in front of our faces. And perhaps more critically, we appear to have lost the ability to simply be alone with our thoughts.

Since I started meditating every day in 1970, a habit I've continued for the past fifty-four years, obviously I wasn't influenced by the Internet, smart phones, and social media for much of the time, since those things hadn't been invented yet. 

So I'm well aware that it is difficult to either do one thing in meditation (concentration) or nothing in particular (open awareness) whether or not we're tempted to follow the allure of the Internet, smart phones, and social media. However, these things do seem to have a negative effect on our ability to be undistracted.

The information foraging theory that they favor, which I won't describe in any detail, says that external diminishing information resources, like having read all the stories you're interested in on a news web site, combine with internal factors such as boredom and anxiety to draw us away from a current focus of attention to something more appealing.  

There we are, meditating away, perhaps repeating a mantra, or being aware of our breathing, or simply being open to whatever is present within our consciousness. The book has a chapter called "Why Do We Interrupt Ourselves?"

Great question. What prevents us continuing to meditate in the way we set out to do at the time we sat down on a cushion or a chair? How is it that when I set out to count my exhales from 1 to 10, fairly often I'll get to 4 or 5 and then drift off into a thought that takes me away from my breath-counting?

The authors don't address these questions directly.

But having finished the book, I'll hazard a guess and say that our distracted mind in meditation, often called "monkey mind," follows the same rules as I outlined above: when we feel bored with the task we're doing and feel anxious that we're missing out on something better than doing that task, we're inclined to shift our attention.

Relaxing into complete acceptance of the present moment is probably the best way I've found to be undistracted in meditation. If I'm feeling peaceful, great, I just feel peaceful. If I'm feeling bored, great, I just feel bored. In other words, I try to follow a basic principle of mindfulness: nonjudgemental acceptance of what's happening here and now. 

This makes my meditation more interesting, because I'm not dividing what's in my mind between good thoughts and feelings and bad thoughts and feelings. Whatever is there is worth paying attention to. By not having a set goal for meditation, I'm less inclined to be bored with a single focus of my attention.

Which isn't to say that I don't try to be single-minded, usually on my breath, but sometimes on a mantra. Some days I can stay focused for pretty much the entire meditation period.

I'm just saying that by having minimal flexible goals -- I'm no longer seeking god-realization or enlightenment -- I'm better able to be content with small pleasures, like the slight tingling of the breath at the tip of my nostrils as I breathe in and out.

There's isn't a fear of missing out (FOMO) on something more and better if I'm content with whatever is happening right now. That reduces my desire to forage for information and stimulation somewhere else, since where I'm at is fine with me. Or at least, fairly fine with me.

A claim that Gurinder Singh "demolished" the Western RSSB sangats

As I frequently observe on this blog, the reason I refer so frequently to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is that for thirty-five years I was an active member of this India-based religious organization headed up by a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form.

If I'd spent that amount of time as a Catholic, then deconverted from that faith, rather than RSSB, now I'd be talking about the downsides of the Catholic Church based on my experience with that religion.

I also point out fairly frequently that for most of the thirty-five years I belonged to RSSB, I was happy with the organization. It met some needs of mine. I felt good about the volunteer work I did for RSSB. I got to know many fine people. 

That helps explain why, when I read the comment below that was left by someone named Chiro today on a recent post, I was bothered by the description of how the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, reportedly markedly changed how the RSSB organization is managed in Western countries.

I'm sharing the comment in this post in part because I'm curious if other people knowledgeable about RSSB agree with Chiro's statements about how Dhillon altered the RSSB groups ("sangats") in Western countries in a manner that the previous guru, Charan Singh Grewal, wouldn't have approved of.

I still have a lot of fondness for Charan Singh, who initiated me in 1971 through a Western representative, Roland deVries, who, like me at the time, lived in California. Back then I recall that most of the people who came to local RSSB meetings ("satsangs") weren't Indian. That certainly was the case when I moved to Salem, Oregon in 1977, where I still live.

There were a few Indians in our sangat, but mostly it was made up of non-Indians. As noted by Chiro in the comment below, prior to Gurinder Singh becoming guru in 1990 after Charan Singh died, Charan Singh (referred to as Maharaji in the comment) appointed "native people" to lead the RSSB organization in Western countries.

(I put quotation marks around native people, because in the United States no one is native except for descendents of the Native Americans who lived here prior to Columbus making his voyage to America in 1492.) 

During Charan Singh's time as RSSB guru, there was an easy grace to the organization. Charan was honest, kind, and warm. There was just the faintest hint of scandal relating to Charan Singh, a single rumor that once he asked a disciple visiting India to smuggle in some watches duty free, if I remember the story correctly.

Gurinder Singh, on the other hand, has been the only truly scandalous RSSB guru. Gurinder has had a criminal complaint filed against him by a family member who accused him of financial fraud totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Gurinder has been accused of making death threats. Gurinder supposedly has markedly updated the RSSB teachings to v. 2.0 or even v. 3.0 after the teachings were basically unchanged for about a hundred years.

So I find it easy to believe that Gurinder Singh also has made large changes to how the overseas RSSB sangats are managed. Gurinder reminds me of Donald Trump in some regards. Both men have strong authoritarian tendencies and like to surround themselves with people who don't question their decisions. Often members of this inner circle are family members. 

Anyway, here's the comment from Chiro. Leave your own comment on this post if you have an opinion about what is said below. It has a ring of truth to me, but I'm open to additional information. 

@um "And lo and behold ..what happened?? .... in Europe the growth of the sangat almost came to a still stand and most people that frequent the gatherings are immigrated Indians."

Why? because of Gurinder's vicious, brutal and despotic attack on the Western sangats after his appointment. Maharaji respected the right of countries to their native people, He often told the story of the Indian child stolen for adoption abroad and how when it found it was Indian deserted even his wife and children to return to India.

Maharaji had an English representative in England, a German in Germany and so one. Gurinder the Shaitan demolished every single Western sangat and handed it over to Indian immigrant control, if possible by his own family members or perhaps a Western crony of his here and there.

RSSB is now an Indian organisation in which Western disciples, if they are foolish enough to subscribe to it, are second class citizens in RSSB. Look at the endless stream of mainly junk videos emanating from RSSB commentators and the official videos of Gurinder himself, for example Modi's electioneering visit (which MCS would have been totally against!). Have you ever seen a Western face in any of them?

In my country every single Western disciple left RSSB over Gurinder's appalling behaviour, his seeming allergy to giving satsang, his rich list lifestyle in the former mansions of the Duke of Bedford in England, holidays on beaches full of semi-naked women and the rivers of Bani drying up from the Dera.

It is shocking to hear he sits on the stage while a preacher does his job for him. You call yourself a Guru when you can't even give Satsang? I could go on. In the immortal words of James Bean on RSSB "Into the mouth of Kal!"

In both politics and religion, reports aren't the same as verified evidence

Building on my post of four days ago, "Harris-Trump debate shows how political lies are like religious lies," now I want to talk about how in both politics and religion reports aren't the same as verified evidence.

I got to thinking about this after watching a clip on X, formerly known as Twitter, from an interview Meet the Press host Kristen Welker did today with Republican Vice-President candidate J.D. Vance.

Leaving aside the fact that I can't stand Vance and his running mate, Donald Trump, I found the arguments Vance brought forward in favor of his belief that migrants from Haiti living in Springfield, Ohio are eating pet cats and dogs, along with geese in city ponds, to be both factually wrong and philosophically nonsensical. 

In case you aren't familiar with this unfounded conspiracy theory, I said in my previous post that Donald Trump brought it up in his presidential debate with Kamala Harris last Tuesday. Click on that link and you can see a video of the debate moderator pointing out to Trump that there's no evidence of Haitians in Springfield killing pet dogs and cats for food.

Didn't matter to Trump. He simply said that he's seen mentions of this on television, implying that it must be true for that ridiculous reason. (Trump mainly watches right-wing TV like Fox News, which lies as often as Trump does -- all the time.)

As you can see in the video below of Welker's interview with Vance (I've made the video start when they begin to discuss the pet cats and dogs thing), Vance acts a lot like Trump in saying that even though the City Manager and Police Chief of Springfield have denied that any pets or geese have been harmed by Haitian migrants, who are in this country legally, by the way, he's gotten reports from people in Ohio, his constituents, saying that this has happened.

To show the difference between reports and verified evidence, here's some examples of reports that lack solid evidence to back them up -- a mixture from politics, culture, and religion. It's been reported that...

Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, so he was ineligible to be president.
Alien spaceships have abducted people and conducted experiments on them.
Some Indian gurus have supernatural powers, such as an ability to remotely save their disciples from harm.
The 9/11 attacks in 2001 were orchestrated by the Bush administration, an "inside job."
Jesus returned to life after being killed by crucifixion and before that walked on water. 
The earrings Kamala Harris wore in her debate with Trump actually were earpieces her staff used to help her answer questions.
The moon landings were faked.
The current Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of a previous Dalai Lama. 
God can be realized by meditating in a certain way.
Other countries are sending their criminals to the United States through our southern border.
In 2020 the election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden, so Trump actually won. 
Allah wants Muslims to kill those who don't believe in fundamentalist Islam. 
There's a monster in the Scottish body of water called Loch Ness.

There's a slight -- extremely slight -- possibility that one or more of these reports is true. That's because it is extremely difficult to prove that something is false with 100% certainty. The best we can do is say "there's no verified evidence of this," which is good enough for science, and also for me. 

However, this allows people like Trump and Vance to make absurd statements, then say, "But there's reports of _______." Well, yeah. People report all kinds of stuff that isn't true, either because they've deluded themselves into believing it, or have a vested interest in spouting a lie. 

The problem, as others have noted in astute comments on this blog, is that it's extremely easy to make a false statement, but much more difficult to show that the statement is wrong. 

Last Tuesday it just took Trump a few seconds to say that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Journalists had to engage in considerable time and effort to contact city officials and determine that regardless of that claim, there is no verified evidence that any cats or dogs have been killed by migrants living in Springfield.

These adages from the Quote Investigator come to mind:

(1) A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes.
(2) A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

Sad, but true. The Quote Investigator says that it is unclear who came up with those adages. Apparently they evolved over time and got erroneously attributed to Mark Twain and Winston Churchill, among others.

Why repeating a mantra during daily activities doesn't make much sense

Recently I got to thinking about the many years (about thirty-five) that I did my best to mentally repeat a mantra not only during my morning meditation, but also as much as possible during the rest of my daily activities.

UPDATE: I meandered quite a bit in coming to the conclusion expressed in this post's title. Here's the short version: The world is always changing. Unexpected challenges, surprises, problems, opportunities, and such continually pop up. Our minds should be similarly flexible to deal with these happenings in the world and our life. Rigidity should be avoided. But some meditation practices have a mentality of "you should always do..." or at least "You should do ... as much as possible." If that ... is being mindful of the reality both without and within us, great. If it's anything else, that's too much rigidity.

What spurred these thoughts was a book by Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen, The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World. I bought it two and half months ago, but it had been sitting in a pile of unread books until I decided to pull it out and start reading it.

It's more interesting than I thought it would be. The general thesis is familiar: that smartphones, social media, and other twenty-first century innovations are messing up our ability to focus and concentrate. 

Of course, anyone who reads books about meditation written hundreds of years ago, and I've read a bunch of them, knows that people back then also were having trouble keeping their minds from straying to extraneous subjects. So the distracted mind is by no means a modern problem. 

However, Gazzaley and Rosen describe why our current technological devices and the internet made the habitual problem of distraction an even bigger problem. I haven't gotten to their recommendations yet for how to deal with this.

The first book of their book lays out why our minds aren't designed to stick with just one thing. This isn't a bug, but a feature. For they say that likely evolution selected for distraction as an effective foraging method.

There an early human is, happily picking berries from plants growing wild (no agriculture yet) in a particular berry patch. Eventually this person notices that the berries are becoming harder to find, since so many have been picked. What to do?

Staying in that spot would be easy, but increasingly unproductive. Searching for a better supply of berries somewhere else would take time and energy, but it makes sense to do this when a current foraging location no longer is paying off.

So we humans are wired to forage. The difference now is that most of us don't forage for food, but for information. The authors write:

Now let's consider the MVT [marginal value theorem] and replace foraging for food resources with foraging for information resources, and insert you as the information foraging animal. Here, the patches are sources of information, such as a website, an email program, or your iPhone. Note that each of these patches exhibits diminishing returns of resources over time as you gradually deplete the information available from them, and/or you become bored or anxious with foraging the same source of information. 

And so, given both your inherent knowledge of the diminishing resources in the current patch and your awareness of the transit time to reach a new information patch, you will inevitably decide to make a switch to a new information patch after some time has passed. Thus, the model reveals factors that influence our decisions about how long we fish in a particular information pond before moving on to fish in the next pond.

A basic point here is that our minds are flexible. Sometimes we're drawn to concentrate on a certain thing. Sometimes we're drawn to leave that thing and search out something else. This is one of the messages that is conveyed in the book through an easy to visualize scenario:

One of our thirsty ancestors is prowling through a deep forest and emerges into an unfamiliar clearing where he spots an enticing stream. Success! But, despite the powerful, actually reflexive, drive to drink, he does not charge forward. Rather, he pauses...suppresses the impulse, evaluates, reaches a decision, and formulates a goal.

Previous experience in this forest has taught him that where there is water, there is often also a highly effective predator hiding nearby -- the jaguar. This is where that critical pause in the perception-action reflex of "see water -- drink water" allows him to undertake an initial rapid evaluation of the situation to determine if this setting deserves more careful assessment. 

This leads him to decide that there may indeed be an invisible threat. He then advances to establishing the top-down goal of carefully evaluating the safety of approaching the stream.

To accomplish his goal, he now engages his selective attention to focus his hearing on detecting a specific sound that he knows a jaguar makes when lying in wait for prey: a deep, nearly inaudible, guttural grumbling. He selectively directs his vision toward detecting the characteristic pattern and color of the jaguar: a strippled orange and black.

And knowing the distinctive odor of this creature, he selectively focuses his olfactory sense on its characteristic musky smell. In addition, he has the insight to know that this particular predator tends to hunt in the thick brush that lies along the left bank of the stream, and so he directs this multisensory selective attention like an arrow at that specific location in space: he fires and waits for a signal.

This scenario gets discussed in more detail by the authors. I'm sharing it to illustrate that our attention involves both top-down and bottom-up influences.

Top-down is what I'm doing right now: deciding to write a blog post about the book I'm reading, then using my attention to carry out that decision/goal. Bottom-up is what would happen if our smoke alarm went off while I was writing this post. That would instantly grab my attention and spur me to find out why the alarm is sounding. 

Which gets me back to the mantra-repeating that I used to do. I still repeat a mantra occasionally when I meditate, and usually when I'm going to sleep. However, I have stopped repeating a mantra at other times during the day, which was encouraged during the thirty-five years I practiced a form of meditation taught by Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an spiritual organization headquartered in India.

This now strikes me as making little or no sense. I talked about this in a 2024 blog post: "A time for mindfulness, a time for mind wandering."

During my intensely meditating years, when I'd spend about two hours a day in disciplined meditation, I also tried to repeat a mantra as much as possible during the rest of the day.

I'm not sure how to classify this activity, as mindfulness or mind wandering. Repeating a mantra while doing everyday activities like driving a car, washing dishes, or even talking to someone, seems to have characteristics of each.

For example, I started to do my mantra meditation thing seriously just after I graduated from college with a degree in psychology. While waiting to start in a master's of social work program, I had a job as a teacher's aide at Santa Clara High School.

Part of that job involved counseling students with behavioral problems. I didn't really know what I was doing when I talked with a student. Plus, I was so enthused about repeating my mantra as much as possible during the day, even at work, often I wouldn't be listening very attentively to what a student was telling me.

Looking back, I wasn't very mindful of the moment in which I found myself. My mind wasn't wandering, but it also wasn't paying full attention to the here-and-now of sensory/external reality. I was focused on repeating some words in my mind, my internal subjective reality.

So I can see the wisdom in the New York Times piece. It's good to let the mind wander, and it's good to let the mind be concentrated. No hard and fast rule here. Whatever seems appropriate at the time.

This is similar to the ancestor coming to a stream where a jaguar could be hiding. Mindfully walking to the water, bending down, and taking a drink while repeating a mantra to keep the mind focused on that activity risks becoming jaguar food. Using all of his senses to determine whether a jaguar is present is what our ancestor needs to do.

Likewise, we need to be flexible in how we use our minds, especially since there is no difference between us and our mind. Our mind is us, which is why we're constantly changing and adapting to new information, just like our ancestor approaching a stream.

Eyewitness report shows Radha Soami Satsang Beas truly has two gurus now

Just got the message below from someone who received it on their Radha Soami WhatsApp chat.

Seems to show that contrary to claims by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) that the new "guru in waiting," Jasdeep Singh Gill, will just be an administrator rather than a true guru for now, Gill actually is performing some of the duties of the current guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, referred to as Baba ji.

Hazur refers to the new guru, Gill, who has been given that title of high respect. So the person on the chat believes RSSB now has two living masters. Interesting theological development. Dharshan refers to the guru attentively looking at his audience, which is considered to have spiritual significance.

Today the new Hazur came on the stage without Baba ji. It was very surprising and shocking, we all expected Baba ji to come out and give Dharshan. Hazur started by looking to his right at the sangat the same way Baba ji looks at each soul in the sangat when giving dharshan. Baba Ji is sharing the load while taking rest after two days of Naam Daan in the Dera. I guess he must be tired. Nobody really screamed or objected in any way, all have accepted Hazur as the new Master. Watching Him give Dharshan means that At this time we have two living Masters. Radha Soami Ji 🙏🏼

UPDATE: Here's a comment I left on this post in response to someone who questioned whether Gill giving Darshan (or Dharshan) really was a change from what RSSB had said earlier about Gill's role as guru.

sant64, the RSSB secretary said that Gill would attend satsang with Dhillon, the current guru. That didn't happen, according to the WhatsApp message. Gill was at a satsang all by himself. So this is why the person who sent the message said that RSSB has two gurus now. It wasn't me that made that claim, it was someone who attended the Gill-only satsang.

Here's an excerpt from a news story that I quoted from in a previous post:
https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2024/09/lets-make-sense-of-the-strange-rssb-guru-succession-episode.html
----------------------------
Devender Kumar Sikri, secretary of the RSSB, said Gill would eventually be the Sant Satguru and will then have the authority of bestowing ‘Naam Daan’. “Till then, he will remain in attendance with Babaji (Dhillon) for the scheduled satsangs,” he said.

Harris-Trump debate shows how political lies are like religious lies

In both politics and religion, lies are commonplace. I'm defining "lie" as a person saying something that isn't true, because there isn't any persuasive evidence supporting the statement.

God loves you is a lie, since there's no persuasive evidence that God exists, so there's no entity to love or do anything else. You'll go to heaven after you die is another lie given the lack of evidence for life after death.

People believe in religious lies for a variety of reasons. For example, it feels good to embrace warm supernatural fantasies that are more appealing than the cold truth of reality. Accepting lies also is a requirement for belonging to most religions, where people enjoy fellowship with other lie-believers.

But there's also great satisfaction in embracing truth, of being part of a reality-based community.

That's how I felt watching the 90 minute debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump last night, the first (and maybe also the last) debate they'll have after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race following his horrible debate performance against Trump last June. 

Along with a couple of instant reputable polls, I felt that Harris won the debate. Not by a little, by a lot. I wrote about this in a post for one of my other blogs, "Harris beat Trump so badly in the debate, I almost feel sorry for him." 

CNN fact-checked both candidates, finding that in the debate Trump had more than 30 false claims, lies, while Harris had just one. In my post I wrote about one of the strangest lies Trump spewed. 

A memorable moment in the debate, which I'm pretty sure made the heads of Trump's advisors explode, because it was exactly what they'd advised Trump not to do, was when he brought up the absurd MAGA lie about immigrants from Haiti eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Obviously that's completely false. 

When Trump blathered on about this lie, I stopped our recording of the debate to take a photo of the split screen reaction from Harris. Her look, along with Trump's angry expression, summed up the entire debate. Harris relaxed and pleasant, Trump tense and angry. 

Here's a video of Trump lying about the pet killings by Haitian migrants. He also lies about Harris paying people to attend her rallies.

The scary thing is that about 46% of American voters, roughly, continue to support Trump even though it is obvious that he's a habitual liar. I'm confident that most of them espouse truthfulness in their personal lives.

So how is it that Trump can command such loyalty even though he shamelessly spouts all kinds of lies every time he opens his mouth? Well, for the same reason that religious leaders are supported and worshipped even though they shamelessly spout all kinds of lies every time they open their mouths. 

Cult leaders attract followers because many people enjoy belonging to a community of like-minded believers even though those beliefs lack evidence to support them, being lies. Standing up for truth is much more difficult than lying down and letting lies wash over you.

However, the truth is more satisfying than lies. Yes, it takes more work to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies, reality from fantasy. But that's why I'm a Democrat rather than a Republican, and an atheist rather than a religious believer.

I don't want to follow a cult leader, whether that individual is a politician like Trump or a religious personage like gurus who behave badly. Since 2004 I've preached the gospel of spiritual independence on this blog. 

Truth means more to me than belonging to a group that demands the acceptance of lies as the price of admission. The Democratic Party isn't perfect, nor are the atheists that I know. By and large, though, I enjoy the company of people who value truth and abhor lies much more than those who make falsehoods their daily companion.

That's why I enjoyed last night's debate so much.

Kamala Harris has her flaws, but she will be a hugely better president than Trump in part because truth comes easily to her, a testimony to her upbringing by an Indian mother and to a considerably lesser extent, by her Jamaican father who didn't have much contact with her after her parents divorced.

Rationality has a lot to do with spirituality

For the thirty-five years I was an active member of an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), one of my favorite Indian words was sat, truth. 

For example, there was the satguru, the true guru, and satsang, association with truth. Eventually I came to feel that truth was the most important thing. When I concluded that for me, truth was best pursued outside the bounds of RSSB, there was only one thing I could do: leave RSSB.

When I came to the epilogue of Thomas Metzinger's book, The Elephant and the Blind, an examination of pure awareness, his thoughts on intellectual honesty resonated with me. That's something I aspire to, though I certainly don't claim that I'm always capable of intellectual honesty. Far from it.

I can be wrong about lots of things within and without my own mind. As Metzinger notes in excerpts I've shared below from the epilogue of his book, our beliefs directly influence how we experience the world. I have great difficulty looking upon Donald Trump with an open mind, because I believe he is a great danger to the United States and the world.

But at least I'm aware of that bias. Being aware of it, I can at least try to be receptive to Trump's words and actions that might contain a glimmer of truth. Maybe even more than a glimmer (though I'm doubtful about that).

In short, I aspire to rationality, intellectual honesty. I've never considered that rationality and spirituality are opposed. As Metzinger says below, actually they're closely linked, because rationality and spirituality both aspire to know the truth about reality, a goal they share with science.

Enjoy...

Yes, there has been a successful rebellion against organized religion and a fresh global counterculture has emerged. Millions have taken things into their own hands, and this can be seen as one of the major cultural innovations of the twentieth century.

But if one looks at the reality of all the different movements, traditions, and groups that have formed -- especially their irrational belief systems and the resulting social dynamics, which are often pathological and cultlike -- one may conclude that the original innovative impulse has long been outweighed by more mortality denial and self-deception, just in slightly subtler forms than they used to take.

Many of the spiritual movements that have developed in recent decades in Europe and the US have long lost their progressive impulse, and most sectors of spiritual counterculture seem already to have morphed into experience-based forms of privately organized religious delusion.

...We therefore have grounds to wonder whether the people labeling themselves as "SBNR" [spiritual but not religious] or "SBNA" [spiritual but not affiliated] are religious after all, just in a slightly new way. In most of these contemporary forms of "nonreligious spirituality," something is sorely missing: a particular kind of honesty. After all, the opposite of religion is not science, but spirituality.

The ethical principle of intellectual honesty can be analyzed as a special case of the spiritual stance and, in their purest form, the scientific and the spiritual stances emerge from the same basic normative idea. But what exactly is "intellectual honesty"?

"Intellectual honesty" means simply not being willing to lie to yourself. It is closely related to old-fashioned values such as propriety, integrity, and sincerity, as well as to a certain kind of "inner decency." 

Perhaps one could say that striving for intellectual honesty is a very conservative way of being truly subversive. Intellectual honesty might be exactly what the many "teachers" and representatives of cults, organized religions, and theologians of almost any type simply cannot have -- even if they often like to make claims to the contrary.

Intellectual honesty means not pretending to know or even pretending to be able to know the unknowable, while still having an unconditional will to truth and a commitment to the growth of knowledge, which includes being genuinely open to new scientific results.

...A flood of empirical data, as well as the mathematical models of modern computational neuroscience, show how the beliefs we hold directly influence the way that we consciously experience the world -- a simple empirical fact whose importance is hard to overstate when it comes to meditation practice.

Whoever wants to become whole -- a person of integrity -- by gradually resolving all conflict between their actions and values must pursue this harmony with their inner actions as well. This requirement is especially true for their "epistemic actions" -- actions for the sake of knowledge.

We act epistemically whenever we strive for insight, knowledge, true belief, sincerity, and also authentic self-knowledge. To the extent that meditation is an epistemic practice, it cannot work without radical honesty toward oneself, without a self-critical ethics of belief.

There is a bridge between spiritual practice and the ideal of reasonable, rational thought: Both involve an ethics of inner action for the sake of knowledge. Moreover, in both cases, the goal is a systematic enhancement of mental autonomy, of inner freedom.

...The sincere intention of being honest toward oneself is what connects critical rationality and the nonconceptual insight of contemplative practice.

.... But you cannot choicelessly observe your own thoughts as they arise and disappear again if you are not prepared to honestly face what you will now begin to see: the painful restlessness of your very own mind, your violent fantasies, your desire for retaliation, your boredom, your loneliness, your existential despair, or your envy.

...I hope that you are beginning to sense that a strict and altogether old-fashioned form of rationalism could have a lot to do with spirituality -- and with what is still missing in large parts of the spiritual counterculture. 

...Here, my point is that rationality is actually a special form of mindfulness. In order not only to think clearly but also to listen properly -- in order to understand one's opponent -- critical rationality first needs the sincere and nonreactive quality of mindful attention. And then it also needs careful, rational thinking, a way of handling concepts that is as precise as possible.

...Real meditation practice cultivates the conditions of possibility for rational discourse by cultivating the sincere intention of being honest toward oneself. If it doesn't, there is something wrong. 

The sad state of RSSB gurus, and advice on seeking spirituality without them

Today M K Sharma left this comment on my previous post, "Jasdeep Singh Gill, successor to RSSB guru, has disturbing tie to Ranbaxy." Sharma made some points that I'd thought of, yet wasn't able to grasp as clearly. GSD refers to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) who appointed Gill as his guru-in-waiting.

What a saga unfolding before our eyes! The new Baba, now revealed as the cousin of the old Baba, GSD, is knee-deep in the same deceitful schemes, and it seems the corruption runs through the entire family.

It’s almost like GSD found the perfect accomplice in his own blood, ensuring that all the ill-gotten gains stay neatly within the family circle. For years, countless devotees have poured their hearts into what they believed was true seva—selfless service—only to realize that their dedication and sacrifices meant nothing when it came to choosing a successor.

No one among these devoted followers was ever considered worthy; the role was reserved for a family member who, it seems, has spent time abroad and conveniently stepped in to take over.

This situation stands in stark contrast to the traditions of genuine saints and Gurus of the past, who selected their successors based on merit, spiritual dedication, and selfless service—a painstaking and rigorous process. The transition of leadership was never treated lightly; it was a testament to the chosen one’s spiritual journey and commitment.

But here, we witness a spiritual empire handed over like a royal throne, with no regard for the values that once defined the path.

It’s disheartening to see a lineage that now operates like a dynastic rule, where leadership passes down through blood rather than virtue. If God is truly watching over Sant Mat, one hopes that He will hold this family accountable for their actions. But in moments like this, it’s hard not to question: is God still present, and how can He allow this to happen?

Great question, assuming one believes in God, which I don't -- since the probability of God existing seems vastly less than the probability of God not existing, given the lack of evidence for God's presence (leaving aside the question of what that presence might consist of and how it could be realized).

However, I remain interested in spirituality, which I define loosely as the search for deeper meaning in a person's life, in this case, mine. For about thirty-five years I accepted the RSSB adage that a guru was needed to be a guide to God-realization. Now I embrace the notion that what many or most of us are looking for is so close at hand, we hardly need any help at all in embracing it.

Just a few pointers, basically. Here's how Joan Tollifson puts it in the "Is India More Nondual than Chicago?" chapter in her book, Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogues About Non-Duality. The back cover describes Tollifson as having "an affinity with Buddhism, Advaita, and other forms of nonduality, but she belongs to no tradition."

Since so-called Eastern spirituality has come to the West, many westerners have rushed to Japan or India or someplace in the Far East to get the real goods. There is nothing wrong with traveling, but what these teachings point to is right here in front of you.

You don't need to go somewhere else. In fact, you never do go anywhere else. Places appear to you, in awareness. They come and go, dream-like.

It has been said that the truth is inside, not outside you. That doesn't mean it's in your intestines or in your emotions, but not in the chair across the room. It means it's in the undivided awareness that beholds intestines, emotions, chairs, birds, and everything else. It points to the realization that there is no boundary, that inside and outside are one whole.

In the same way, past and future are inseparable from Here/Now. When I talk about the jewel of Here/Now, I'm not in any way intending to disparage the study of history or the creative envisioning of the future. I'm simply pointing to the fact that it all shows up Here/Now as one indivisible whole that is boundless, seamless, timeless and spaceless.

How to realize that? Well, first of all, notice that the question itself is rooted in the assumption that it is not realized right now. Is that true? What are you imagining that such realization would look like?

Perhaps the acquisition of the sighting of an enormous object like a giant dinner plate? Or maybe an experience like being permanently high on drugs? Or maybe some mental understanding like an algebraic equation or a verbal formulation that would be the final answer to every question?Does it make sense that totality would be an object, an experience, or a formulation? Does it make sense that "you" would need to find it?

The truth itself is so simple that the mind habitually keeps overlooking it by looking elsewhere.

Endlessly fascinated by glittering distractions (India, Japan, robes, bells, gurus, teachers, retreats, satsangs), we overlook the jewel of here and now. Of course, India, Japan, robes, bells, gurus, teachers, retreats, satsangs -- it's all the jewel. There's no escape.

But when we think the jewel is in India but not in Chicago, or that we need to go to a retreat or a satsang to find it, then we are like a wave looking for the ocean. The imaginary problem can only be resolved Here/Now.

After wandering all over the world seeking the truth "out there" somewhere, after having amazing spiritual experiences and breakthroughs, we inevitably end up back in our ordinary everyday life. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we wake up back in Kansas. The whole journey is inside us, and what we are seeking is inside us, too.

And when I say inside us, again, I don't mean inside the body mind -- I mean Here/Now.

And that's really what all spiritual teachings are pointing to -- that the heart of the matter, the jewel that is being sought is not "out there" somewhere apart from you or in the future. No one can give it to you. You must discover it yourself. And the only thing that makes this discovery seem difficult is how easy it is. It is already perfectly realized.

This moment is the Buddha.

The thought of "somewhere better" keeps us from seeing that what we are seeking, we already are. The postponements, the ways we move away, get subtler and subtler. Wanting to never run off on another journey to Oz ever again is itself running off on such a journey! But luckily, the journey and the one taking it are both imaginary. You never really leave Here/Now.

Sometimes people say, "Everything is great when I'm at these meetings," or "It's all totally clear when I'm off on a meditation retreat, but then I get home and I lose it all." I come back to Kansas and it seems like I'm this screwed up character again.

But of course being on a meditation retreat is going to be different from being in the office. Sitting in silence listening to the rain is different from listening to other human beings. And yet both the office and the meditation retreat appear Here/Now in this ever-present awareness. 

What is, is so simple, so unavoidable. Everything is as it is, even if what is appearing is confusion or upset. 

I like what Tollifson says. I also like what Rumi said in a bit of Sufi poetry, as shared in my blog post, "This is my favorite Rumi quotation." Both are speaking about the here and now.

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

Jasdeep Singh Gill, successor to RSSB guru, has disturbing tie to Ranbaxy

The gurus of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) are supposed to demonstrate exceptionally high spiritual virtues, including honesty. After all, the RSSB teachings proclaim that their gurus are God in Human Form.

So a few days ago, when I saw on the RSSB web site that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the organization's current guru, had appointed a successor, Jasdeep Singh Gill, I was surprised to see that Gill had worked at Ranbaxy from 2006 to 2010.

Ranbaxy (2006 – 2010): Multiple roles
Worked across Project management and Strategy functions

Surprised, because Ranbaxy was accused of pharmaceutical fraud following sale of the company to Daiichi Sankyo in 2008, following which the fraud allegations came to light.

In 2013 the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Ranbaxy had agreed to plead guilty to several felonies. 

In the largest drug safety settlement to date with a generic drug manufacturer, Ranbaxy USA Inc., a subsidiary of Indian generic pharmaceutical manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, pleaded guilty today to felony charges relating to the manufacture and distribution of certain adulterated drugs made at two of Ranbaxy’s manufacturing facilities in India, the Justice Department announced today. Ranbaxy also agreed to pay a criminal fine and forfeiture totaling $150 million and to settle civil claims under the False Claims Act and related State laws for $350 million.

And when did the illegal manufacture and distribution of adulterated drugs take place at the two Ranbaxy manufacturing facilities in India? At the same time (2006-10) Jasdeep Gill was serving as Executive Assistant to the CEO of Ranbaxy, Malvinder Singh. That's an important position. We have to assume that Malvinder was the one who hired Jasdeep.

The Department of Justice announcement says:

Ranbaxy USA admitted to introducing into interstate commerce certain batches of adulterated drugs that were produced at Paonta Sahib in 2005 and 2006, including Sotret, gabapentin, and ciprofloxacin... Ranbaxy also acknowledged that the FDA’s 2006 and 2008 inspections of the Dewas facility found the same issues with incomplete testing records and an inadequate stability program, as well as significant cGMP deviations in the manufacture of certain active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished products.  

There's more, so bear with me on what admittedly is fairly complex corporate malfeasance. I've shared additional detail in previous blog posts for those who really want to learn about the Ranbaxy-related scandals.

First, Gurinder Singh, the current RSSB guru, reportedly was highly involved in Ranbaxy dealings. In 2016 a Singapore tribunal awarded Daiichi Sankyo about $500 million in damages because Ranbaxy hadn't divulged its pharmaceutical quality problems in the course of the sale to Daiichi Sankyo.

Then, according to the preceding link, "In 2018, Daiichi Sankyo approached the Indian Supreme Court with the allegation that the Singh brothers were diverting funds using a number of shell companies to avoid the payments."

Now Gurinder Singh enters the picture again. Because Malvinder Singh accused the RSSB guru in a criminal lawsuit of being a recipient of that massive money diversion via shell companies. Religare and Fortis were companies once owned by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh into which they pumped much of the $2 billion received from the sale of Ranbaxy.

In 2019, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, or SFIO, was also probing their [Singh brothers] role in an alleged fund diversion at Fortis Healthcare. After its initial probe, the SFIO had said that it believed that the fraud could be to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore. The Securities and Exchange Board of India and the SFIO suspected that the Singh brothers had diverted public money from Fortis Healthcare to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and other religious bodies.

In 2019 Gurinder Singh, his family, and close associates were ordered by the High Court of Delhi to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to RHC Holding so the money that was siphoned off into their pockets could be used to pay what Malvinder and Shivinder Singh owed Daiichi Sankyo. 

NEW DELHI: Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the spiritual head of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), his family members and associates are among 55 individuals and entities ordered by a court to pay over Rs 6,000 crore owed to RHC Holding in connection with the settlement of a dispute related to Daiichi Sankyo’s acquisition of Ranbaxy Laboratories.

The Delhi high court ordered Dhillonʼs wife Shabnam, sons Gurkirat and Gurpreet and daughter-in-law Nayan Tara, among others, to pay up the amount due to RHC Holding, the flagship holding company of the Singh brothers who formerly owned Ranbaxy. Money will also be recovered from former Religare Enterprises chief Sunil Godhwani and his brother Sanjay Godhwani. The non-banking financial services conglomerate was formerly promoted by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh.

So Jasdeep Singh was part of the financial scandals that started with the illegal actions by Ranbaxy regarding dangerously adulterated pharmaceuticals at a time when Gurinder Singh's nephew, Malvinder Singh, was CEO of Ranbaxy and Jasdeep Singh was an executive assistant to Malvinder.

In my post, "'Dirty money' tied to RSSB guru's Ranbaxy wealth," I quoted from a Wikipedia article about Malvinder Singh and Ranbaxy.

Malvinder Singh's tenure as CEO of Ranbaxy starting in 2006 is controversial. Corporate culture of fraud continued unchecked under his tenure.

Jasdeep Singh, the guru-in-waiting of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the hand-chosen successor to Gurinder Singh, became the executive assistant to Malvinder Singh in 2006. It's difficult to imagine that someone so close to the Ranbaxy CEO, who almost certainly was hired by Malvinder, wasn't aware of that "corporate culture of fraud" during the four years he worked at Ranbaxy.

Jasdeep Singh Gill should be questioned about this by the Indian financial press. He's a distant cousin of Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Malvinder Singh also is related to Gurinder Singh, a nephew I believe, though genealogy isn't my strong suit. Here's a Family Tree that someone sent to me today. The Gill and Dhillon families are linked.

Given how closely Gurinder Singh was involved with Ranbaxy and the Singh brothers at the time, it seems entirely possible that the RSSB guru had a say in the hiring of Jasdeep by Malvinder. You know, keep everything in the family. 

Now Gurinder has chosen Jasdeep as his successor, also keeping the RSSB guru'dom in the family. It's unsure why this happened now. RSSB says that the guru's health is fine. If that's true, then it's possible that the guru's legal problems played a role in his decision to step aside from managing the large RSSB financial and real estate holdings, handing that over to Jasdeep as of a few days ago.

I give credit for stimulating this post to a Church of the Churchless reader who emailed me with thoughts about Jasdeep Singh Gill's connection with Ranbaxy. This person had read Bottle of Lies, a book about the fraud in the generic drug industry. An excerpt from the book about Ranbaxy was shared with me:

At the behest of managers, the scientists substituted lower-purity ingredients for higher ones to reduce costs. They altered test parameters so that formulations with higher impurities could be approved. They faked dissolution studies. 

 

For some markets, the company fraudulently mixed and matched data streams, taking the best data from manufacturing in one market and presenting it to regulators elsewhere as data unique to the drugs in their markets. For other markets, the company simply invented data. Document forgery was pervasive.

 

The company even forged its own standard operating procedures, which FDA investigators rely on to assess whether a company is following its own policies.

 

In one instance, employees backdated documents and then artificially aged them in a steamy room overnight in an attempt to fool regulators during inspections.

 

There was little effort to conceal this method of doing business. It was common knowledge,  from senior managers and heads of research and development  to people responsible for formulation and the clinical people. Essentially, Ranbaxy's manufacturing standards boiled down to whatever the company could get away with.'

This person commented:

What am trying to get at is that if it was common knowledge all this was taking place, plus the using of brand name drugs crushed up and made into capsules to be tested plus superimposing brand-name test results onto their own applications, unless everyone was briefed to change tactics, there is no way Gill couldn't have known.

Here's more of what this person wrote to me. The quote at the beginning is from an unnamed source. It seems accurate.

Malvinder and Shivinder Singh were running Ranbaxy until 2008 when they sold their stake.

 

"11 June 2008, Malvinder Singh stunned the Indian business world by announcing that he and his brother were selling their 33.5% stake in Ranbaxy to the Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo for $2 billion."

 

'Stunned' the business world because Ranbaxy was at its peak. Malvinder and Shivinder were arrested in October 2019.

 

So Gill was there during the rampant fraud going on and Ranbaxy had Malvinder as CEO. Gill must have been aware something was wrong?

 

Thakur, the main whistleblower knew there was something seriously wrong in 2003. Thakur encountered chaos. Disputes at executive meetings sometimes escalated into fistfights. He said, "There was no structure. It was the complete antithesis of everything I had learned for ten or twelve years."

 

Everyone tried to block every single attempt he introduced to sort the mess out. His boss who had employed him resigned because of the rampant corruption. He told Thakur he knew enough to bring the company down.

 

I have to condense this. Brian.

 

His next boss had the same problem. He discovered there was astonishing fraud going on. Astonishing is the right word! Ranbaxy was lying about everything. The drugs destined for terribly sick AIDS patients had not even been tested.

 

When Thakur's boss 2 told the corporate office the drugs must be immediately withdrawn, they refused. Thakur's boss responded by telling them he was a physician and no way was he going to sign off something he knew full well was going to cause harm to patients. Either they pull the stuff off the market or he was resigning. 

 

Anyway, Ranbaxy was faking its dossiers to the FDA, Europe and India. At behest of the managers of Ranbaxy, (Malvinder and Shivinder) scientists substituted lower purity ingredients for higher ones to reduce cost. They faked everything. To generate normal results, they crushed up brand name drugs into capsules so that they could be tested instead of Ranbaxy's own drugs. They then used the brand-name results as their own.

 

It goes on an on. In markets including Brazil, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Peru, and Dominican Republic, Ranbaxy simply invented all the data. Thakur's boss 2 resigned when they refused to withdraw the crap drugs and stop selling them to all these countries.

 

Then they got rid of Thakur because they knew he knew too much. After they combed his computer for incriminating evidence against Ranbaxy they hacked his servers and planted his IP address on porn sites.

 

Thakur was furious and handed in his resignation providing the evidence of computer tampering. Thakur then decided to contact the FDA and present his evidence....long story.....

 

Will leave it there, Brian because it's a long, convoluted saga but just to give you a preliminary background sketch.

 

I can't believe Gill was not aware of what was going on. He was there when Malvinder and Shivinder were at the helm for four whole years until they sold their stake to the Japanese company when they were being asked to present legal data to UNICEF which they couldn't do. Neither could they supply data to the FDA.....am being vèry brief. 

 

And who got Gill the job? More nepotism? Gill is Babaji's [Gurinder Singh's] mother's sister's grandson. They are related. Yikes!

Let's make sense of the strange RSSB guru succession episode

I'm used to strange things happening in the realm of religion.

After all, this is where we humans believe in the strangest things: a virgin birth, commandments issuing from God, and in the case of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religion, a guru who is God in Human Form.

At least, that's how the RSSB teachings describe the guru, a fact that I'm well aware of, since I was an active member of RSSB for thirty-five years. 

So when the RSSB guru announces a successor, this is a big deal in the eyes of RSSB devotees. It's also newsworthy otherwise, since RSSB has enough followers to be a significant political force in India, especially in the Punjab, where the organization's headquarters is located.

As noted in my first post about the recent strange RSSB guru succession episode, "RSSB guru appoints Jasdeep Singh Gill as successor," traditionally this has happened much differently than what transpired this time.

Always, to my knowledge, the RSSB process has worked this way. If anyone can point out why I'm wrong, do so in a comment; I don't claim to be an expert in the history of RSSB.

A guru of advancing years makes known who their successor will be in a document that isn't made public until after the guru's death. Then it is opened and the RSSB membership learns who the new guru is. The guru is inaugurated, so to speak, through a turban-tying ceremony (Dastar-bandi) that's part of the Sikh tradition.

But the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, did things differently.

His chosen successor, Jasdeep Singh Gill (a distant relative), was announced while Dhillon was very much alive. Because this meant that two RSSB gurus were alive at the same time, considerable confusion resulted from the succession announcement.

This official succession announcement must have been approved by Dhillon. It seems inconceivable that something so important would have been approved by someone else without Dhillon's knowledge of the wording.

The first paragraph of this announcement says that Dhillon is both the Satguru (true guru) and Patron of RSSB. Satguru refers to the spiritual side of the guru's duties. I take it that Patron refers to the organizational/management side of the guru's duties. Gill has been nominated as Patron, effective immediately from September 2, 2024.

The second paragraph of the announcement goes further, saying that Gill also shall succeed Dhillon as the Satguru of RSSB and will have the authority of giving initiation. Not surprisingly, this caused most people, journalists included who wrote stories about the RSSB succession, to conclude that Gill not only has become the Patron of RSSB, he also is the Satguru. 

That conclusion is reinforced by the third paragraph, which says that Dhillon (Baba Ji) wishes and requests that the same love and affection he has received from RSSB members (Sangat) be given to Gill in carrying out his service (Sewa) "as Patron as well as Sant Satguru." Again, both: Patron and Satguru.

Note that the announcement says "For Information of Entire Sangat." That's every member of RSSB, who number in the millions worldwide, I believe. So this announcement was widely shared. I'm no longer a member of RSSB, but I got copies of it from several people who knew I'd be interested in it.

Also note that the subject of the announcement is "Nomination of Patron and Sant Satguru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas." Nothing in the announcement says that Gill has to wait to carry out these roles. The whole tone of the announcement is that this is happening now, not in the future.

However, the RSSB web site had a different tone. I'm not sure when the web site message was published. As mentioned below, I suspect it was considerably after the just-discussed announcement. 

The web site says that Gill will become the Patron of RSSB right away,  but will succeed Dhillon as the Satguru and have the authority to initiate people in the future. So Gill is an instant RSSB manager and a RSSB guru-in-waiting.

A story in The Tribune, "Day after flip-flop over Beas dera head, Dhillon and Gill share stage," indicates that the RSSB web site language is the result of Dhillon changing his mind about having Gill become the full-blown RSSB guru -- both Patron and Satguru, as the three paragraph announcement said was happening. 
Download Day after flip-flop over Beas dera head Dhillon and Gill share stage - The Tribune

Here's excerpts from the story.

A day after a ‘clarification’ over the occupant of ‘Sant Satguru’ (spiritual head) seat of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), ‘Babaji’ Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his successor, the newly appointed patron ‘Huzur’ Jasdeep Singh Gill, shared the stage in the presence of a large number of dera followers, who converged at its main centre located 45 km from here.

Gill (45), a distant relative of Dhillon, has been appointed the patron of all RSSB Societies with effect from September 2 as part of the succession plan. On the official website of RSSB, the title ‘Huzur’ has been prefixed with his name and a photograph showing Dhillon with Gill has also been uploaded.

It is learnt that confusion ensued among the followers about the sudden development and they started pouring in last evening when the announcement of Gill as successor was made.

...An earlier communiqué issued yesterday on behalf of Dhillon read: “He has received full support and love of Sangat. He has wished and requested same love and affection be given to Jasdeep Singh Gill as patron as well as Sant Satguru”.

Following this, the followers gathered at the dera, apparently upset at the impending exit of Dhillon. They seemed to be pacified only after the RSSB issued a ‘clarification’ late last evening, stating that Dhillon would continue to lead as ‘Sant Satguru’.

Devender Kumar Sikri, secretary of the RSSB, said Gill would eventually be the the Sant Satguru and will then have the authority of bestowing ‘Naam Daan’. “Till then, he will remain in attendance with Babaji (Dhillon) for the scheduled satsangs,” he said.

So it appears that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current RSSB guru, changed his mind about handing over to Gill both the spiritual and management duties of the guru. Nothing wrong with that. To me, it just shows that even a supposed "God in Human Form" makes mistakes and learns from experience. That's how it is with all people. Even gurus.

RSSB guru appoints Jasdeep Singh Gill as successor

NOTE: I just saw in a comment on this post a link to a story about RSSB now saying that Gill actually won't have initiation authority as a previous RSSB message shared in this post said. Reportedly this occurred after RSSB members got upset about the news. Here's how The Tribune story starts out: "In a dramatic turn of events, the spiritual head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon (69), nominated his distant relative Jasdeep Singh Gill (45) as his successor with 'immediate effect', but later decided to continue to hold his position."

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

Big news in the world of Indian gurus! The guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon, has appointed Jasdeep Singh Gill as his successor. 

This is the first time that's happened in RSSB history. Previously, a guru would appoint a successor who took over after the guru's death. Now Dhillon has done this while still alive. 

RSSB has a notice on its web site.

It sort of sounds from this like there will be two RSSB gurus. Dhillon will remain as the "real" guru for a while and Gill will become the full-blown guru in the future after becoming Patron now, basically manager of RSSB's operations. Apparently only Dhillon will be initiating new disciples until Gill gets the go-ahead to initiate once he becomes the full-blown guru at some point, though this is contradicted by news stories below. 

This will be confusing theologically. But, hey, Dhillon hasn't been a traditional guru so it fits with his style.

UPDATE #1: Just checked my email and saw that several people sent me a RSSB notice saying that Gill has initiation power. So it looks like RSSB now has two full-blown gurus at the same time.

The Economic Times has a story about Gill. It starts this way, contradicting what the RSSB web site says about when Gill will become the "sant satguru" with initiation power.
Download Who is Jasdeep Singh Gill Radha Soami Satsang Beas' new head and former Cipla CSO

A Hindustani Times story also says that Gill will be initiating new disciples. Guess we'll just have to wait and see whether RSSB now has two satgurus: one complete satguru and one incomplete satguru. Or maybe there are two complete gurus, which will confuse disciples who won't know which they should bow most deeply to. [Note UPDATE above: this seems to be the case, since Gill apparently will be initiating people.]

Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated his successor, 45-year-old Jasdeep Singh Gill, as patron and ‘sant satguru’ of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas Society with immediate effect.

In a significant development, the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organisation headquartered on the banks of the Beas river near Amritsar, on Monday announced that its head Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated Jasdeep Singh Gill, 45, a doctorate in chemical engineering from Cambridge and an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, alumnus, as its patron and ‘sant satguru’. 

A statement by RSSB secretary Devender Kumar Sikri said: “Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated Jasdeep Singh Gill, son of Sukhdev Singh Gill, as patron of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas Society with immediate effect from September 2, 2024.

“Jasdeep Singh Gill shall also succeed Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon as the Sant Satguru of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas Society and will have the authority of giving initiation (naam),” Sikri said, adding “Baba Ji has expressed that like he has received full support and love of the ‘sangat’ after Huzur Maharaj ji, he has wished and requested that the same love and affection be given to Jasdeep Singh Gill in carrying out his ‘sewa (service)’ as patron and sang satguru.”

UPDATE #2: I received this thoughtful message from "DSK" just now. Wanted to pass it along with this person's permission.

Dear Mr. Hines,

I have, for many years, followed with great interest the RSSB part of your blog because I come from a Radhasoami family.

I write to draw your attention to this morning's rather surprising announcement that Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated his successor, an academic and businessman called Jasdeep Singh Gill. As per the expected RSSB style, the announcement on its official website is low-key, inconspicuous and provides only the most basic information on the newly appointed Guru: https://rssb.org/JSG.html.

The speed and suddenness with which the decision was made is enough to pique the curiosity of even an aloof observer such as myself. It is of course entirely likely that the search for a candidate has been going on for any number of months or years before settling on this one, but for most satsangis including my parents, news of this sort was only ever going to be received negatively.

There are accounts, for example, of a spate of suicides during a previous succession described in the RSSB literature, and other drastic emotionally-charged reactions. The stakes are high, and RSSB has made its way into almost every country on earth; a coordinated emotional outburst on a worldwide scale that is anything like those of the past would be catastrophic in its proportions, and, more importantly for GSD, would be terrible publicity for the sect.

On the less emotional side of the spectrum, it is a known phenomenon for even longstanding satsangis to reject the new Guru and go their own way: accounts of this too can be found in the RSSB literature — they simply cannot "feel" connected to the new Guru, they simply cannot bring themselves to attend satsang, and so on. I partly suspect that GSD simply wishes to cushion the ill but inevitable effects of the transition on such a neurotic, dependent and obsessive population that is the sangat by nominating and "training" the new Guru whilst still living, breathing, and giving satsang, almost like — an apprentice!

A separate but related observation. More important than the satsangis are those high-ranking disciples of GSD who have amassed enough material support, enough popularity, and enough prestige, either to attempt to claim the Guruship for themselves from within, or break away and form their own splinter groups under the same or a similar banner.

Those who are familiar with RSSB history and literature will already be aware of the various Guruship claims, iterations, and spin-offs that have accompanied every succession so far. With the organisation having grown as large as it is today, a succession dispute would be akin to a schism in the Catholic Church, and a spin-off would represent the loss of hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of disciples as they are siphoned off into the worship of yet another pop-up dera.

And this would be shown in all its terrible ugliness by the Indian media. Best to have a successor in line that everyone can agree on whilst still alive, and avoid the dramas. GSD has learned from the dark days of RSSB's previous successions, and is trying a strategy which he hopes will obviate these risks.

The new satguru has, you will observe, already been assigned his spiritual title of "Huzur," which, while I suppose does have the practical effect of distinguishing one Guru from another in speaking and writing, it more importantly allows for a modicum of pretence at a grandeur that comes with, say, regnal and papal titles.

Every Guru in the lineage has some sort of title or "nickname" by which he is exclusively addressed by all disciples, and which appears to me to be specifically contrived to demarcate the newly anointed divine Master's identity from his previous merely human identity:

1. Soamiji Maharaj (from Shiv Dayal Singh)
2. Babaji Maharaj (from Jaimal Singh)
3. Bade Maharaj/Huzur Maharaj, et al. (from Sawan Singh)
4. Sardar Bahadur Maharaj Ji (from Jagat Singh)
5. Hazur Maharaj (from Charan Singh)
6. Babaji (from Gurinder Singh Dhillon)

Though the titles tend not to be too over-the-top in comparison with other Indian-style sects of similar type, we can still see that RSSB, with its dour rejection of the majestic, the ritual and the ceremonial, appears at least subconsciously to have preserved this nominal element of traditional succession.

It remains to be seen what will become of the old Dastarbandi, the traditional turban-tying ceremony, considered by many satsangis to be almost akin to a coronation. The communique (attached) makes it clear that the succession is "with immediate effect" from today. This may not seem significant to many, but to the masses of satsangis who have grown attached to the current Guru, whether Indian or diaspora, a ceremony represents a visible transfer of authority which fits in nicely with the simple "God-In-Human-Form" style of theology.

A transitional apprenticeship period now blurs these lines. "How can there be two Gods, two Babajis?" I hear my mother ask. I suppose we shall find out soon enough under the new diarchy.

A final point to be made is that it is clear for anyone with eyes to see that successors are not selected for their piety or religious merit, but for their business, management and administration skills. A quick perusal of the Successor's profile will make this plain enough to even the most casual observer. RSSB is no longer a religious organisation; it is an organisation with some religious activities, and must be run accordingly. The present Master is part-Guru, part-CEO. The new Master will be more CEO than Guru.

Nondual awareness could be closest to the scientific worldview

In my previous post, We're all having an "out of brain experience," I said there was more to say about a lengthy chapter in Thomas Metzinger's book about pure awareness, The Elephant and the Blind. 

Here's that saying. More accurately, here's what Metzinger says, because his ideas are so subtle and often expressed in philosophical language, I figure that it's best if I use his own words here, rather than trying to restate them in my own language.

Don't be surprised if some, or much, of what Metzinger says in these excerpts isn't crystal clear. It isn't always clear to me, either, and I've finished his entire 500 page page book.

Our inner model of the space of pure awareness is a medium, like a window. You can look at a window, or through a window. And as we all know, sometimes you can somehow do both at the same time.

...Just like a window, our inner model of the space of pure awareness, and epistemic openness (which may be what MPE [minimal phenomenal experience] is) can be more or less transparent. If it is fully transparent, we typically do not notice it.

We see through it, but it reappears as the experiential realness of what we take to be the external world. It reappears as the all-pervading subjective confidence that things are there and we know about them. It reappears as the certainty that something has been known, the nonconceptual knowledge that knowledge exists. It reappears as the background experience of openness to the world. 

Only through meditation practice do we sometimes become aware of the window itself, quite often while still looking through it at the same time. Then we begin to notice something that has been there all along. 

...Let me first explain what "phenomenal transparency" means. This philosophical concept has a lot to do with what, in meditation research, is often called "reification." Phenomenology is described as transparent when certain contents of experience (e.g. perceptual objects, the body, and sometimes even the content of thought) are experienced as thinglike, mind-independent, ultimately real, and immediately given.

We don't see that they are processes anymore because, phenomenologically, they have become frozen or "solidified" into something objective and real. You experience the tree in front of you not as a holographic construct, but simply as a tree, out in front of you, irrevocably real and as if immediately given.

This is because normally your introspective attention does not penetrate the earlier processing stages in your brain that construct the visual scene, bind different visual features into a gestalt, resolve ambiguities, and separate the tree from the background.

...In my book Being No One, I said that transparency is a special form of darkness. There is something that you cannot see -- namely, the fact that most of the content of your experience are constructs, the brain's best guesses, representations not experienced as representations. They are probability distributions, predictions, mere possibilities -- but represented as realities.

...Some aspects of experience "seem to vanish" as a result of exercising attentional agency, actively trying to "fix our attention" onto them. Nondual awareness is highly evasive because any sense of exerting mental effort to attend to it or any attempt to meditate on it immediately destroys it by creating an epistemic agent model and contracting the phenomenal signature of knowing into this model.

...One of my main claims in this book has been that pure awareness is not literally contentless, but that it actually represents something. It is of something, but in a way that makes it completely natural to describe it as devoid of content, as entirely empty, as not like anything, or even as a kind of nothingness.

...In some sense it is an embodied image occurring in a biological organism. You can see an image in two different ways: You can recognize it as an image, or you can look right through it, as it were, and mistake it for a direct experience of reality itself. Drawing on Moore, we can now say that in the first case the image would be called "opaque," and in the second case, it would be "transparent." 

This is merely a visual metaphor. But if it's pointing in the right direction, then pure awareness itself also could be sometimes opaque and sometimes transparent. Sometimes we might be able to look at it, and sometimes we might be looking through it. And sometimes we are it. 

...The transparent VR [virtual reality] in our heads has been highly parsimonious and computationally efficient in helping us survive and copy our genes to every next generation. However, meditation practice can make the medium "opaque," so we sometimes become aware of the medium while still perceiving the world. 

And in a full-absorption episode, we have nothing but the autonomous recurrent activity of the medium itself, creating an internal model of mere epistemic capacity, of the abstract space of awareness as such. Epistemic openness is all there is. 

...I think that conscious beings are precisely those who have a model of their own space of knowledge -- they are systems that (in an entirely nonlinguistic and nonconceptual way) know that they currently have the capacity to know something. 

...The space itself can be almost empty, containing only a clear, abstract image of the mere capacity for knowledge and experience. Or it can contain images of actually ongoing actions, perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. In this account, MPE [minimal phenomenal experience] itself is a model of the entirely unobstructed empty space in which all these different processes of knowing something can occur. 

...Nondual awareness, on the other hand, is a state in which the model is there and has become salient, and in which something actually is known -- but the structural feature of subject/object duality (by means of which the embodied brain normally explains what is happening to itself) has been attenuated. Now the experience of knowing is no longer contracted into an ego, into an epistemic agent model -- now "everything knows," but selflessly. 

...Astonishingly, very few people seem to have realized that we have continual access to the richest, most robust, and closest-to-perfect VR [virtual reality] experience currently imaginable: our very own ordinary biologically evolved form of waking consciousness. 

...Have you ever imagined that you were a visionary who could see into the future? Well, your ordinary conscious experience is an (often reasonably successful) attempt to do just that, because what you see is the most likely future state of the world. 

Scientifically, phenomenal content (the brain-based content of conscious experience) is the content of an ongoing simulation; it is a prediction trying to model the probable causes of a sensory signal. It is not a veridical representation of the actual environment, and it is useful for precisely this reason, because it helps the organism reduce the uncertainty about what will happen next.

This is what conscious experience and VR [virtual reality] have in common: They provide us with a counterfactual image of the world. Waking consciousness is a complex hallucination constrained by the senses, and -- as sketched out earlier in our discussion -- it makes something possible become real.

As opposed to today's VR, biological consciousness is about successfully anticipating the future. This is the reason why we could even say that ordinary consciousness is an action-oriented kind of visionary experience. 

...This raises the interesting question of whether some global modes of conscious experience are closer to the emerging scientific image than others -- whether their underlying ontology maps more closely onto the scientific worldview than does ordinary waking consciousness, which is strongly shaped by biological imperatives. 

I think that nondual awareness could be a high-convergence mode in exactly this sense: a form of conscious experience that is suboptimal from a biological perspective but is closer to our best scientific understanding of what the conscious brain really does and what the deeper causal structure of the world actually is.

We're all having an "out of brain experience"

At long last, I'm reaching the home stretch of reading Thomas Metzinger's meaty/tofuy book, all 500 pages of it, The Elephant and the Blind, about the experience of pure consciousness that's based on more than five hundred experiential reports from meditators.

There are 35 chapters. I've just got two left to read. I thought about skipping some, but after finishing the "Transparency, Translucency, and Virtuality" chapter this morning, I'm glad that my rather obsessive reading style -- usually I read every page in a book, unless I'm really not enjoying it -- paid off in this instance. 

Because Metzinger makes some fascinating points in this chapter. I'm sure I've been exposed to similar thoughts in other books by Metzinger that I've read, along with other neuroscience books, but his basic thesis seemed fresh to me.

He starts off the chapter, #28, with this overview:

This is a special chapter. I want to draw your attention to three particularly interesting phenomenological aspects, and therefore I offer more extensive commentary than usual, in addition to our selection of experiential reports.

In chapter 27, on nondual awareness, I said that ordinary consciousness is a nonconceptual mode of knowing one's inner model of reality. However, any time that this way of knowing is contracted into an ego and falsely experienced as direct and immediate, a large part of the model appears as an outer reality to us. 

We then have what the Finnish philosopher Antti Revonsuo has called a built-in "out of brain experience"; we experience ourselves as an embodied agent situated in some external environment.

This makes good evolutionary sense: Our biological ancestors successfully learned to use different parts of their inner model as a proxy for parts of their environment. According to our ancestors' subjective experience, models of trees turned into trees and models of wolves into real wolves.

Their brains also learned to use the model of the body that carried them, including sensations like hunger, thirst, breath, and heartbeat, as a proxy for the body itself, improving the organism's capacity for self-control. 

This is what it means to have a "transparent self-model" -- that is, a conscious model of yourself as a whole that has become so reliable that you are unable to experience it as a model -- and we will learn more about all this in the second half of this chapter.

To stay alive, there was a boundary that had to be protected, or re-created from moment to moment. Conscious experience often includes an explicit representation of inside and outside (e.g., of the interior parts of my body, of inner feelings and emotions arising from them, and also of what appears as my "own" mind) -- plus an outside world of mind-independent objects. 

What meditation practice shows is that awareness can also occur with no explicit representation of inside and outside. This can lead to a conscious model of reality in which, according to verbal description, everything is inside and outside at the same time -- or in which it has neither quality.

There's a lot to unpack here, which is why the chapter is unusually long, 27 pages. I'll have more to share about it in other blog posts. For now, I'll be content with some basic observations about the "out of brain experience" thing, a term I like a lot, which is a play on the much more familiar "out of body experience."

With an out of body experience, someone has the illusion (almost certainly that's what it is) that their consciousness has left a body and entered the world. That's pretty damn dramatic, so it gets a lot of attention. 

An out of brain experience, by contrast, is what almost everybody has at each waking moment. It's so commonplace, few people even know that's what they're experiencing, neuroscientists being an exception, along with Buddhists and others in the know about how the human mind works.

For we have an intuitive sense that there is (1) our internal consciousness and (2) an external world that consciousness is aware of. In other words, consciousness perceives a world that is independent of our perceptions of it.

But this isn't true. It can't be true. It just seems to be true. 

The brain has no direct connection with external reality, the world outside of the brain. The brain is locked inside our skull. All it knows about the world comes through the five senses -- sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. 

Those sensations undergo a great deal of processing within the brain before they appear in consciousness. That's part of what Metzinger means by a conscious model of reality.

So in truth we never have an "out of brain" experience of an outside world. We have what our conscious model of reality presents to us, which ordinarily is constrained by mostly accurate sense perceptions that allow us humans to generally agree on what the world is like. 

"Beautiful sunset," we may say to a stranger. "Sure is," they may reply. 

This is a manifestation of the transparent nature of our conscious model of reality. Usually we aren't aware of the model that, somewhat akin to the programming of an AI (artificial intelligence), leads us to wrongly believe in dualism: that there is a physical world out there that's separate and distinct from the mental world in here. 

Metzinger says that understanding the nonduality of reality is what both modern neuroscience has been able to achieve, along with ancient wisdom traditions such as Buddhism.

We are now beginning to expand our understanding of what the phenomenological concept of "nonduality" means. One of the most fascinating aspects is that some experiences of nondual awareness given by our participants quite directly match our best current models of what consciousness might really be from a neuroscientific, computational, or mathematical perspective, while at the same time cleanly mapping onto phenomenological descriptions given by scholar-practitioners more than 1,000 years ago.

This may well be one of the most philosophically important results of our first interdisciplinary study. It is interesting to see how one can apply the idea of nonduality not only to the distinctions between subject and object and between inside and outside, but even to the distinction between what is "real" and what "does not exist."

 

Sea level and evolution show that reality is shades of gray, not black and white

One of the reasons why I've come to dislike religions so much is that they're so prone to making absolutist statements. 

God is.... blah, blah, blah. The commandments to follow are... blah, blah, blah. You can tell good from evil by...blah, blah, blah. That's all bullshit, regardless of what the blah, blah, blah consists of. 

I say this for a couple of reasons.

One obvious reason is that religions don't deal in truth, they deal in fantasy. They make stuff up, then expect people to believe in it. If they don't, bad things are supposed to happen: hell, damnation, God's wrath.

Another more subtle reason is that reality isn't marked by sharp distinctions akin to the difference between black and white. While reality may seem that way at first glance, a closer look reveals shades of gray. 

Examples abound. 

A vacuum in deep space isn't really empty, but is filled with ephemeral quantum particles popping in and out of existence. Sexual desire isn't homosexual and heterosexual, but includes other varieties such as bisexual. The big bang wasn't a single moment of creation, but is ongoing as space continues to expand some 14 billion years later.

Here's a few more examples drawn from articles I read recently in The New Yorker and New Scientist. 

The New Yorker article by Brooke Jarvis is called "Sea Change: What the search for sea level tells us about living on our changeable planet." The Compass app on my iPhone tells me that I'm at 360 feet elevation. But what am I elevated above?

Well, sea level. Just about everybody knows that elevation refers to the distance above sea level. Few people, though, wonder about how sea level is measured, me certainly included. The article describes how difficult this is.

The oceans rise and fall with the tides, which are caused by the moon. Some places in the ocean are higher than others. Because of how our planet bulges as it spins, "the water levels of equatorial seas are some twenty-one kilometers higher than the sea ice at the North Pole." The oceans expand when warmer and shrink when cooler. Melting ice sheets raise the ocean level while growing ice sheets lower it.

It was only in 1929 that the U.S. adopted a shared reference for setting mean sea levels around the country; it was derived from calculations based on twenty-six tidal stations and 106,724 kilometres' worth of coastline surveying.

The article is based in part on a book about the quest to determine sea level.

"There is no progress to be found in the story this book tells, no constant improvement of knowledge, no approach to a more 'real' system of reference," von Hardenberg writes in his introduction. Instead, there's a story of people abandoning a belief in some perfect natural reference point as it slowly becomes  evident how complicated and changeable the planet on which they live truly is.

The line between the land and the ocean, after all, has never been fixed; it is a binary abstraction we impose on a place that, as Rachel Carson wrote, is forever "changing with the swing of the tides, belonging now to the land, now to the sea." For animals and plants that make their homes in the intertidal zone, survival depends on flexibility, on adapting to a world in which the only constant is inconstancy.

The New Scientist article by Colin Barres is called "Becoming Human." Subtitle: "What is a human and when did such a being emerge? These fundamental questions about ourselves are surprisingly difficult to answer."

Our species is called Homo sapiens. But there have been other species in the genus Homo. DNA testing, such as via the firm Ancestry, shows this. Five years ago I got my DNA tested. I was mainly interested in where my recent relatives came from, but the test also showed a much more distant heritage: like most people, I have some Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. 

So I'm mostly Homo sapiens, but not entirely. This indicates how it is difficult to draw a hard and fast distinction between who is "human" and who isn't. The article goes into this problem at some length, ending with:

A century after the discovery of the Taung Child, and 50 years after Lucy, we seem no closer to understanding when or why humans emerged. That is frustrating, but also, paradoxically, a reflection of how much progress has been made.

When researchers had just a handful of hominin fossils to work with, it was easy to spot the significant differences between them and to assume that there was a dramatic moment when our ancestors became human. It is because we have better evidence that we now know things are more complicated.

What is clear is that we didn't suddenly "become human" 2.9 million years ago when A. afarensis died out. That should come as no surprise. Evolution is a continuous process, and the propensity to divide life up into conspicuously distinct species and genera is less a reflection of fact than another human idiosyncrasy. 

Ultimately, where we draw the line between "us" and "them" isn't simply a biological question -- it is a philosophical one too.

"Empty Force" is a Tai Chi and martial arts myth, but people fall for it

Today someone in my Tai Chi class spoke about a Tai Chi master being able to repel people, or knock them down, without using any physical force. You know, just with their mind, their supposedly highly evolved chi power. 

(Note: in Chinese the same word can denote different things. The "Chi" in Tai Chi means boundary. Chi can also refer to vital life force, also known as qi. That's how I used it in the sentence above.)

When I heard this, I thought, that's a Tai Chi myth, because it isn't possible to project a physical force just with the mind. However, I didn't say that out loud. People believe all kinds of things that aren't true. That's the basis of every religion: fantasies that people believe in. 

They do this out of a search for meaning. It can feel good to believe in the supernatural, in God, in "empty force" chi power.

I'm not shy about making fun of those myths on this blog, and in conversations with people who agree with me about the absurdity of supernaturalism, but I don't go out of my way to dump a heaping load of reality on someone else's fantasy if the fantasy works for them.

Fortunately, when it comes to empty force in Tai Chi and other martial arts there's plenty of evidence that has debunked this myth. 

It seems clear that one foundation of this myth is the same foundation that causes followers of a guru to ascribe supernatural powers to them. I know whereof I speak, because for 35 years I was an active member of an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru who was considered to be God in Human Form.

That there wasn't any objective evidence of this didn't bother the most fervent of the guru's devotees (I was a bit more on the skeptical side) who believed the guru could know what his disciples were doing and thinking half a world away, and could intervene in their lives if he so chose.

Those devotees, like devotees of a Tai Chi master who claims to have the power of empty force, want so badly for their fantasy to be true, they participate in the manufacturing of supernatural powers which then are taken as truth by other gullible devotees.

Here's a You Tube video that, in 5 1/2 minutes, demonstrates how "Chi Power Woo Woo Fails." (Title of the video.) It's rather sad how the students of a Tai Chi or marital arts master will either consciously or unconsciously go along with his empty force B.S., which is shown to be a fantasy when someone not under the spell of devotion participates in a demonstration that invariably fails. 

If you want more amusement, check out this longer 13 1/2 minute video that shows some additional empty force staged ridiculousness. Again, I'm unsure whether those who participate in the demonstrations know that the supposed master is a fake, or have convinced themselves that he's really got empty force power, so they fall down when he gestures at them. I like the description of the video:

Qi Power, Lin Kong Jin / Empty Force Compilation of Martial Artists desperately in need of psychiatric treatment. Harness the Chi Power of confused minds! ... This kind of belief is common in Chinese and Japanese martial arts as Tai Chi and Aikido. But there are also "sects" out there as Yellow Bamboo and EFO. It seems like many of the "masters" believe themselves in what they do. Apparently some people have a very deep need of believing in magic and mysteries. - "Hey! Look at me! I am special!"

Lastly, "Myth busting in Chinese marital arts" is a good post on The Tai Chi Notebook site. Excerpt:

These more marketing-orientated myths about the prowess of practitioners – how deadly they were, how unbeatable their martial arts was, how the power of Qi was greater than physical strength all fed directly into all that nonsense about no touch knockouts and “empty force” that has marred the image of Chinese martial arts in the modern age.

And politics also gets involved. When obvious myths about the origins of martial arts are dispelled they often get replaced by more politically motivated stories about the arts origins that are equally as unprovable and unreliable yet fit a nationalist agenda. It seems like the Chinese martial arts are forever being used to support some sort of Chinese government propaganda.

In short, the Chinese martial arts world was in need of, and remains in need of, a lot of myth busting, because much of what we are being told and sold is basically not true. But Bowman’s fears, that we are in danger of spoiling the fun for everybody with this relentless search for the truth, holds true, I think. I was certainly attracted to Chinese martial arts by a steady diet of orientalist propaganda from the likes of David Carradine’s Kung Fu TV series and Marvel comics with heroes like Iron Fist. This is often what draws us to the martial arts in the first place and there has to be some way of searching for truth in the martial arts, but keeping the magic that drew us there in the first place. 

UPDATE: Here's a few links to descriptions of empty force by people who believe this myth. They sound a lot like miraculous faith healing stories in evangelical Christianity. My best attempt to be sympathetic about such unfounded beliefs is that it shows the power of the human mind: when someone really wants to believe in something that isn't true, they reshape reality to fit their belief. I just have an old-fashioned attitude that we should reshape our beliefs to fit reality, to the best of our ability.

Empty Force
Empty Force in the Buqi System
Chinese Empty Force

And here's a post that, on a quick read (it's pretty long) puts Tai Chi training in a realistic perspective. I'll share some excerpts that debunk the notion of empty force as something supernatural. By the way, if anyone is wondering, I've practiced Tai Chi for nineteen years. Before that I was into hard style martial arts for about twelve years, earning a black belt in a form of karate. 

What is Empty Force?

Possibly a year after my lifelong friend and martial arts partner, Martin Inn and I had immigrated Chu, Ch’u-fang into the United States, he announced a new and important mission for us. There was someone else, someone of great importance, that we must now turn our efforts toward immigrating. This was a special and secretive individual only known to a few advanced adepts, such as Mr. Chu, and we should be honored to have the job of bringing him to America.

He was so special because he had mastered the technique of “empty force,” the highest achievement of Taijiquan. When one’s circulation of qi becomes high enough, he reaches the point at which he can project it at others, knocking them down at a distance, or even killing them. We all have some idea of what this looks like, having seen it in countless gung-fu movies.

Marty and I were properly stunned, not expecting to be “living the dream” of becoming gung-fu supermen quite so quickly, and Mr. Chu must have noticed, asking next if we believed him, to which, after quickly glancing at one another, we both assured him that of course, teacher, you can bet on it. After nodding solemnly for a moment, he told us, sounding rather disgusted, that we were fools. No one, he emphasized in a slightly louder tone of voice, can do this, and don’t believe anyone that tells you that they can. 

I am sure that no one could righteously fault me for ending the current discussion right here, because Mr. Chu’s warning is definitely the short answer to the whole subject of empty force, given what people take the phrase to mean.

It is a worthwhile warning, because purveyors of this “power” seem to surface every few years with the persistence of some sort of biblical pestilence. It is amazing to see the number and relatively high caliber of people who can be taken in by this “emperor’s new clothes” con, in which an inability to be affected by this “qi attack” identifies an insufficiency in you, rather than in the one mounting the attack. 

...As far as any fantasies concerning what appears to be happening in supposed demonstrations of “empty force,” these should be relegated to the same mental dust bin as similar martial fantasies about making oneself heavier or lighter at will, or fighting multiple assailants while blindfolded. All of these kinds of stories have their origins in some sort of reality, but never the reality that is presumed.

The presumed reality here is that someone is emitting a force that operates at a distance and can affect completely untrained and even unaware opponents. In the words of Chu, Ch’u-fang: no one can do this, and don’t believe anyone who tells you that they can.

"Right Concentration" is a good book about meditation and the jhanas

As I like to say, it isn't wise to judge a book by its cover, but I've found that it usually makes sense to judge a book by the first twenty pages. For that's enough reading to get a good feel for the author's style and personality, at least as how it's expressed in writing.

This morning I got that far in Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas. Brasington clearly has a lot of experience with meditation, Buddhist variety, which is pretty much how I've been meditating for around fifteen years, maybe longer. 

I don't consider myself a Buddhist, though. That enables me to look upon the book as a guide for those who are interested in Buddhism, yet aren't committed to the full-blown Buddhist way of meditation, as Brasington is. 

So when he says that it's best if someone has gone to several week-long meditation retreats in order to get the most out of his book, I think, "Not in my opinion." I have the same attitude when he lists the five Buddhist precepts for lay people (monks have 227 precepts and nuns 311, which makes me really glad I'm not a monk or nun).

To refrain from killing living beings.
To refrain from taking that which is not given.
To refrain from committing sexual misconduct.
To refrain from wrong speech.
To refrain from intoxicants.

I have no idea what these specifically mean. They sound fine, but for me Buddhist moral/ethical teachings aren't of much interest.

I bought the book for its meditation advice. Here Brasington is on more solid ground, since I view meditation as akin to physical exercise: anyone can do it, and it doesn't matter what religion or philosophy you espouse. That's irrelevant to meditation. 

Brasington speaks of awakening rather than enlightenment, considering that word is closer to the meaning of the teachings ascribed to the Buddha. The jhanas are stages of concentration on the path of awakening. Supposedly they are experienced in a certain order, but it seems entirely possible that this is just a product of Buddhist tradition, not reality. 

He starts off by discussing The Preliminaries in a chapter with that name. Mindfulness is key to setting the stage for jhana realizations. 

It's also necessary to develop habitual mindfulness. We translate the word sati as "mindfulness," but we need to keep in mind that it is etymologically related to the Sanskrit smrti, which means "memory." So being mindful means to remember. And what are we to remember?

Be here, now.

Pay attention to what's actually going on in the present moment, to the place where you are currently located. Now, this doesn't mean you should never plan for the future or learn from the past. But it does mean that when doing so, you need to know that is what you are intending to do.

In the gradual training, the Buddha suggests that you pay attention to your bodily activities throughout the day. When you are attempting to learn jhanas, this unrelenting mindfulness is the most useful of all the practices given in the Satipatthana Suttas. 

This practice itself won't generate sufficient concentration to enter a jhana -- but it will make it much more likely that any method that you do undertake to generate such concentration is actually effective.

Brasington then has a chapter on Access Concentration, defined as concentration strong enough to provide access to the jhanas. Momentary concentration is less concentrated than access concentration, and one-pointed concentration is more concentrated than access concentration, being the "stronger concentration associated with the jhanas."

The general method for generating access concentration is to put your attention on a suitable meditation object, and when your attention wanders off, gently bring it back. Keep doing this until the distractions fade away and your attention on the object is unwavering.

The typical object of attention is the breath.

It is extremely important to not control the breath in any way -- just pay attention to the naturally occurring breathing. If you control the breath, it does make it easier to not become distracted. But it makes it too easy, and you won't generate enough concentration to enter the jhanas.

It is probably better if you can observe the physical sensations at the nostrils or on the area between the nose and the upper lip, rather than at the abdomen or elsewhere. It is better because it is more difficult to do; therefore, you have to concentrate more.

Since you are trying to generate access concentration, you take something that is doable, though not terribly easy to do, and then you do it. When noticing the natural, uncontrolled breath at the nose, you have to pay attention very carefully. 

...When the thoughts are just slight, when they're not really pulling you away and you're fully with the sensations of the breath, knowing each in-breath and each out-breath, this is the sign that you've arrived at access concentration.

Whatever method you use to generate access concentration, the sign that you've gotten to access concentration is that you are fully present with the object of meditation. 

An important principle is to not crave the jhanas.

If you are craving to experience a jhana, you have the hindrance of wanting. You have to set aside such craving -- those expectations -- to be able to enter the jhana. Setting aside expectations is certainly easier said than done. The best advice I can give you is to refrain from what Ayya Khema called "result thinking."

Don't focus on what you hope or think or expect should happen. Ayya offered a simile that you might find helpful.

Suppose you want to drive from your home to, for example, a retreat center many hours away. Suppose someone gives you excellent directions. If the directions start out by saying something like, "When you get to the end of your street, turn right. When you get to such and such a highway, turn left," it does you no good to start looking for the retreat center as you drive down your street toward the first turn.

In order to use the directions properly, you don't focus on the destination; you determine where you currently are and what you'll need to do next when you arrive at the place where you change from what you are doing now to something new.

This is exactly how to approach learning the jhanas. Gain an understanding of the directions. Determine where you currently are and what "landmark" to look for so that you will know when to take the next step. Don't focus on, or even think about, the destination.

Why teachers are needed, but not gurus

Back in my true believing days, the 35 years that I was an active member of a guru-centered religious organization (Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB), I accepted the RSSB adage that a guru was needed because we require teachers throughout our life, and finding God or our true self, pretty much the same thing according to RSSB, really required a teacher, being so difficult on our own.

That made sense at the time, but not now. For in my present way of looking at reality, there's a big difference between needing a teacher (who can be really valuable) and a guru (who can be really problematic). 

I'm not going to rely on dictionary definitions of "teacher" and "guru," because these don't capture the emotional difference between people who embrace someone they call a teacher and someone they call a guru. Being intimately familiar with this difference, having experienced it myself, I'll explain what I mean.

I've had many teachers of various sorts in my life. When I was young, they were classroom teachers in elementary school, high school, and college. When I was working, they were people who knew more than I did about some subject. When I played competitive tennis, they were instructors and coaches who could help me with the flaws in my game. I also consider that every book I've read has taught me something, so all the authors I've read during my lifetime have been teachers.

This just scratches the surface, of course. My wife has been my teacher, along with my daughter and granddaughter. Dogs and cats also. Plus movies and television shows. There's no end to the teachers we encounter, looking upon "teacher" as any entity that helps us learn something. Nature can be a great teacher.

But here's the thing: I've never looked upon any teacher as infallible or irreplaceable. Each of them had strengths and weaknesses. I never worshipped any of them. I never viewed any of them as being different in kind than I was. They simply knew something that I didn't, so there was a flow of knowledge from them to me. Of course, often there was a return flow also, since students can be sources of knowledge for teachers. It goes both ways. 

If a teacher wasn't meeting my needs, I had no problem letting them go and finding a better teacher. Athletes do this all the time with coaches. Students do this all the time with their instructors. For it isn't the person that is important in teaching, it is the knowledge being transmitted from the teacher. If I could get more of that knowledge from someone else, I happily said goodbye to a teacher. 

A guru often, or usually, is looked upon in a different way.

I'm speaking here of real gurus, not those who just have that title applied to them casually, as in "he's a real guru when it comes to fixing computer problems." I'm talking about people who claim to have spiritual, mystical, or religious knowledge that can be conveyed to students, often termed disciples. These gurus typically are viewed as possessing wisdom that others lack, which merits a level of devotion to them that teachers aren't entitled to.

I say this as someone who has been criticized many times by visitors to this blog for not sticking with the RSSB guru who initiated me in 1971, Charan Singh, for my entire life. I'd sometimes reply to those criticisms by saying that I've had two wives, many cars, lots of different teachers, various jobs, numerous houses, and varied political beliefs. So why the heck should meditation or spirituality be the only part of my life that can never change? Why can't I say farewell to Charan Singh, especially since he died in 1990?

The reason offered by avid guru-worshippers was along the lines of, you were initiated by a perfect living guru, God in Human Form; this is a lifetime commitment; even if you don't get the hoped-for results or knowledge, you should have stuck with the guru. 

Well, that's ridiculous.

This attitude assumes that a guru has supernatural powers, so is able to bring benefits to a disciple that an ordinary meditation teacher -- person, book, video, whatever -- can't provide. I heartily disagree with this faith-based assumption. I can easily do this, because I used to be a disciple who felt that way, so I know how wishful thinking can lead followers of a guru astray.

Almost certainly, the human brain and mind is as physical an entity as rocks, trees, and grass are. The only difference is that our brains are hugely complex, capable of so much more than other physical objects are. Given that complexity, sometimes we need teachers to point the way toward a good way to meditate, practice mindfulness, be happier, and other possible goals.

And sometimes we don't need any help at all, being capable of figuring things out by ourselves. It just depends on a person and their situation. Serious mental illness may require a psychiatrist. Merely feeling down may just require a walk in nature. 

I'm not saying that embracing a guru is always the wrong thing to do. This felt absolutely right to me at a certain point in my life. However, I do believe that viewing a guru as divine, as perfect, as beyond criticism, is dangerous. For most of the 35 years I was a part of RSSB, I kept telling myself something that I read in a book by Huston Smith, who heard this from a Zen practitioner.

I have a new koan: I could be wrong. 

Beautiful. I readily admit that I could be wrong about gurus. All I ask is that those who follow a guru say the same thing about the person they're devoted to: I could be wrong. 

Jhanas are the current meditation craze, says TIME magazine

I've got to get me some jhanas. That was my thought, admittedly not thoroughly spiritual, that came to mind this morning after I read a story in the August 26, 2024 issue of TIME magazine: "The Pursuit of Happiness."

It was written by Nina Bajekal, who combined her reporting about a company, Jhourney, that offers training in how to experience jhanas through meditation, with her personal experience of going on a week-long Jhourney retreat.

The online version of her story is called "My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand." In case you aren't able to access the story, here's a PDF file.
Download Meditation Start-up Jhourney Promises Bliss on Demand | TIME

This is how the story starts out:

Nick Cammarata has always been unusually happy. The 31-year-old AI safety researcher had a good childhood, but it wasn’t just that; situations that made others depressed seemed to roll off him. “I think I was probably happier than 99% of people. It’s just kind of unfair luck,” he says. “I figured maybe what I had was as good as it gets.”

Then, in 2021, as part of an effort to investigate whether life could get even better, Cammarata discovered the jhanas. These eight advanced meditative states, characterized by deep concentration and blissful absorption, have been practiced for thousands of years but were long considered the domain of mystics and monks with decades of training. Cammarata, however, taught himself to enter these states after around 1,000 hours of solo meditation practice. “I was shocked that it was possible to get this thing you turn on in 10 seconds and just get joy for five hours straight,” he says. “Nobody talks about it.”

So he started to. In the past few decades, a handful of American Buddhist teachers had published books and led retreats on the jhanas, but knowledge hadn’t spread much beyond meditation circles. Cammarata’s enthusiastic tweets about the jhanas got the attention of many in the Bay Area, fueling a growing interest in the ancient practices. Now neuroscientists are researching these altered states of consciousness, more meditation teachers are guiding people into them, and a much hyped startup called Jhourney—where Cammarata is a minor investor—claims most of its participants can reach them in under 40 hours of meditation.

The mainstreaming of the jhanas may represent the next frontier of the mindfulness movement, which has taken hold in American schools, hospitals, and workplaces and, propelled by apps like Calm and Headspace, become a billion-dollar industry. Mindfulness has been shown to minimize stress, improve focus, and help with pain management. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this surge in interest comes as mental-health issues are soaring globally, and as the U.S.—the richest country in the world—has dropped out of the top 20 nations for happiness, largely because of a decline among under 30s. Dr. Matthew Sacchet, director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, believes the destabilization of the pandemic, as well as other global challenges, has contributed to a “crisis of meaning” that makes advanced meditation increasingly appealing.

So what are the jhanas? The story offers some hints.

One of the challenges with the jhanas is that as with falling in love, ordinary speech doesn’t seem to do them justice. Analogies abound: getting goose bumps while listening to music; cuddling with a partner after sex; the satisfaction of completing a major project.

The initial jhanas, characterized by high-energy experiences, seem to vary dramatically. One Jhourney participant likens the first jhana to the jolt of putting your tongue onto a battery, while another describes a floating sensation so intense that she wondered if her water had been laced with MDMA.

There’s more consensus about the fourth jhana, however, which seems to be characterized by a deep peace and equanimity, a stark contrast to the internal dissonance most of us are used to in everyday life—thinking about emails while talking to a loved one or worrying about a past conversation while trying to enjoy a party.

The fourth jhana, Devaney says, “feels like every atom in your body has had a nice meal, a good glass of water, and is sitting back in its armchair after dinner. It’s very profoundly like your whole system is on the same page.”

Sounds good. But I'm not willing to pay $1,295 for an online retreat or $1,995 for an in-person Jhourney retreat, especially given the daily/weekly time commitment. 

So I took a much less expensive route to getting all blissed out with jhanas. Since I have little understanding of what they are, or how you experience them, I ordered a book that was mentioned in the TIME story, Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas, by Leigh Brasington. I'm totally willing to pay $17.92 for a chance at jhana bliss.

The Amazon listing sounds appealing. So did the reader reviews, which are 81% 5-stars.

A practical guidebook for meditators interested in achieving the states of bliss and deep focus associated with the Buddhist jhānas

One of the elements of the Eightfold Path is Right Concentration: the one-pointedness of mind that, together with ethics, livelihood, meditation, and more, leads to the ultimate freedom from suffering. So how does one achieve Right Concentration? According to the Buddha himself, the jhānas—a series of eight progressive altered states of consciousness—are an essential method. But because the jhānas can usually be achieved only through prolonged meditation retreat, they have been shrouded in mystery for years.
 
Not anymore. In Right Concentration, Leigh Brasington takes away the mystique and gives instructions on how to achieve them in plain, accessible language. He notes the various pitfalls to avoid along the way and provides a wealth of material on the theory of jhāna practice—all geared toward the practitioner rather than the scholar. As Brasington proves, these states of bliss and concentration are attainable by anyone who devotes the time and sincerity of practice necessary to realize them.

RSSB national satsang at Haynes Park leaves attendee with "disbelief and disappointment"

Since I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) for 35 years until I became disillusioned with this India-based religious organization headed up by a guru considered to be God in Human form, I like to share messages from other people who don't like what RSSB has become.

Below is a comment left on a recent Church of the Churchless blog post by M B Sharma. I enjoyed his honest "review" of a RSSB talk, or satsang, apparently given by Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current guru. 

Sharma alludes to the fact that while the RSSB teachings clearly state that the primary purpose of human life is God-realization, which requires living a pure and simple life, Gurinder Singh enjoys a lavish lifestyle and has been accused of financial misdeeds that reportedly enriched the Dhillon family with hundreds of millions of dollars. 

There's many posts about this on this blog. Here's a couple of them:
More details surface about financial fraud involving RSSB guru
Why the RSSB guru is responsible for financial fraud

In 2018 Gurinder Singh Dhillon reportedly said that he'd answer questions about his involvement in the financial misdeeds. I'm quite sure that this never happened. In his comment, Sharma says that people attending the RSSB satsang were told they couldn't ask questions about the guru's involvement in shell companies or his financial dealings.

So much for transparency and truth-telling. Apparently that's something RSSB initiates should do, but the RSSB guru is exempt. Here's what Sharma said:

I recently attended what is referred to as the national satsang in Haynes, Bedford, UK, and I left with a deep sense of disbelief and disappointment. The event, which draws crowds from all over, turned out to be little more than a recital of selected poetry from saints or teachings from previous RSSB leaders. There was nothing new, nothing profound—just a repetitive cycle of words that seemed designed to maintain a facade rather than inspire genuine spiritual growth.

The Q&A session, which I had hoped would offer some clarity, was even more bewildering. The responses were vague and confusing, leaving me with more questions than answers. It felt as though real issues were being sidestepped, and any attempt at deeper inquiry was subtly discouraged.

The satsang took place in a sprawling mansion, a stark contrast to the simplicity one might expect from a spiritual gathering. What struck me most was the realization that GSD has a private residence within the premises, a well-guarded house that raises serious questions. How did he manage to secure such a luxurious home on land bought under the guise of charity? This residence is maintained by sevadaars—volunteers who provide free housekeeping and other services. It seems this place serves as his holiday retreat, where he spends 5-6 months each year.

Observing the opulence surrounding GSD, it’s hard to reconcile his lifestyle with that of a genuine spiritual leader. Yet, his sevadaars, some of whom are reportedly paid handsomely, work tirelessly to project him as a divine figure, a 'God in human form.' The commercialization of the event was evident—after the program, there were stalls selling food, books, and even photographs of GSD. Donation boxes were scattered everywhere, inviting contributions without providing any receipts, making it impossible to account for the funds collected. Not be surprised if it used for money laundry.

Given the substantial income generated, one would expect that the organizers could at least provide free food, especially considering that many attendees travel long distances. However, the irony is that the food sold is prepared by volunteer sevadaars, who then have to pay for it themselves.

I also learned that attendees are not allowed to ask about GSD’s involvement in shell companies or his financial dealings. Questions must be submitted in advance, and only a select few are permitted to speak. This level of control was not seen a few years ago, and it seems designed to prevent any scrutiny.

The security at the event was on par with that of an airport—rigorous checks, and no phones allowed. The atmosphere was more reminiscent of a high-security event than a spiritual gathering.

Having returned after a long time, I couldn’t help but feel that the situation is deteriorating. The contrast between the message of simplicity and humility and the reality of luxury and control was too glaring to ignore. I can only hope that the truth will eventually emerge if there is truly a higher power overseeing all of this.

This is a comment by AAM in response to what Sharma said. 

@M. B. Sharma, I have to agree the atmosphere at these events have deteriorated, as there isn't much spiritual inspiration. Of course, the representatives are quick to tell you that the problem is with you. You are not receptive. You get what you come to get. May not be attending in the future.

Douglas Harding sees God where most people see consciousness

It's a familiar feeling. I'm enjoying a book about spirituality, because the author makes sense to me and doesn't go overboard on religious mumbo-jumbo. 

Then... I reach a chapter where I fill the margins with question marks, because what's being said doesn't make sense to me and sounds like religious mumbo-jumbo. That doesn't stop me from enjoying the previous part, but it makes me wonder how the author could shift so suddenly into religiosity. 

That's what happened to me today with Douglas Harding's Face to No Face: Rediscovering Our Original Nature. I wrote about my initial reading of it in "Love is keeping your mind open for other people and things."

I was cruising along in the second chapter, enjoying how Harding looked upon the "faceless" aspect of him as being a capacity for knowing, which is pretty much how Thomas Metzinger describes pure awareness in his book The Elephant and The Blind.

Harding uses anxiety as an example of how consciousness has space for anything that can be known.

Look, just as I find myself Capacity for you, just as I find myself faceless Here for your face, colorless Here for your color, formless Here for your form, so I find myself Space Here, Capacity Here, for anxiety. I'm Space for it.

This Space, this Capacity for the changing feelings, is always me, always available. So what I'm on about is not a case of feeling. It's a case of fact. I should have said this right at the beginning of the evening. We are not on about feelings. We are on about where they come from, what is upstream of feelings, the facts. 

It's facts which will bring us relief from our anguish. Feelings will not.

Music to my ears. I love facts. I'm not always capable of distinguishing fact from fiction, but I aspire to being as factual as possible in my life. This is a big reason why I've come to dislike religion, which all too often is fact-free.

I guess I should have paid more attention to all the capitalized nouns in the excerpt above from Harding's first chapter. That's often a giveaway when a spiritual writer elevates everyday words to a meaning that is anything but obvious, as in Capacity, Here, Space.

Because it turned out in the second chapter that Harding somehow concludes that our usual human consciousness is God. And this from a guy who just said a few pages before that he was all about facts. Here's some excerpts that show what I mean. 

Harding says that if we're to see God Here and find God Here, "we have to know what we are looking for so that we can tell whether those mystics and sages got it right... something very specific, not something vague."

Well, this makes little sense. After all, there's no proof that God even exists, much less that God has certain well-defined characteristics. Religions heartily disagree on both fronts. (I call Buddhism a religion that has no god.) Harding then says:

And I would say that which we can name God provisionally (or if we prefer, Atman-Brahman or Reality or Essence or even No-thingness -- I don't care what you call it) has five characteristics. 

The first characteristic is that it has no boundaries, no fence around it, no edges. It's absolutely unlimited in all directions. The second characteristic is that it is absolutely clear, clean, empty of contamination. It is utterly simple, totally transparent, empty of everything but itself, empty even of itself, clearer than glass, cloudless, an infinite sky.

The third characteristic is that it is also full of the world. Because it's empty, it's full -- full of the scene, whatever the scene is, absolutely united with it. The fourth characteristic is that it is awake, it's aware, it's conscious. And the fifth characteristic is that it is right where you are. 

The only place you will find Her Majesty is nearer to you than everything else. That's her throne room, her royal palace, right where you are. The Kingdom is within you.To sum up, there are five characteristics of Her Majesty: she is infinite, empty, full of the world, awake, and right where you are. Now that's a description of God. But doesn't the description also fit you?

This is an amazing bit of bad philosophizing from someone who claims to be factual, but obviously is deeply religious in a Christian sense, which is the religion he was brought up in by a fundamentalist father. 

First of all, Harding makes the mistake that Thomas Metzinger warns about repeatedly in his own book about pure awareness. He uses the phenomenology of how awareness appears to us humans to draw unwarranted conclusions about the actual reality those phenomenal experiences point to. 

Metzinger calls this theory contamination, which is exactly what Harding does in the excerpt above. Harding describes how consciousness appears, then claims that those characteristics are those of God, so, using horribly twisted logic, our consciousness is God. 

Circular reasoning gone wild.

Harding neglects to mention that God also is considered by major world religions to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent -- qualities that definitely don't apply to human consciousness, since he only focused on those that match up with how our limited consciousness appears to us. 

Here's some additional quotations to show further how Harding equates God with human awareness.

We should have the humility to be a little bit traditional here and realize that for two thousand years great saints have been working at this, and the common feature of their discovery is: "Not I but Christ liveth in me." Paul goes on and on: "I am crucified with Christ." Father Gerard Hughes, author of the book, God of Surprises, says, "God calls on us to become Christ." Not Christs, but Christ. When I hold out my arms, I see the pattern of the Crucifixion. We're built to that incredible pattern.

It is really true that Who you are is the Origin of the world, everywhichway you look at it. Just think! You never moved an inch. You are the unmoved mover of the world. You are timeless. You have no boundaries.

The big thing for me, a development over the last few years, is the realization of the Incarnation. To put it very, very simply, if it is true what Tennyson says, what the Koran says, that God is nearer to me than my hands and my feet and my breathing, then God is Here and This is where he lives...These feet go on the errands of God, and this voice speaks his words. They are the instruments of Who we really, really are.

I really, really disagree. Harding's first book, On Having No Head, appealed to me because it was almost entirely based on what I considered to be facts about our human consciousness. However, somewhere along the way, Harding merged the Christianity of his youth with his headless perceptions. 

The result isn't useless, but it contains way too much gibberish for my taste.

Love is keeping your mind open for other people and things

I love my wife. Which is why last night was so disturbing.

It was deeply painful to know that soon I'd be holding my wife's hand for the last time, because she was about to die. The more I thought about this, the more distress I felt, until I was on the verge of crying a massive amount of tears.

Thankfully, my wife was fine.

Her death was a product of my imagination, which ran away with me while I was brushing my teeth after we'd finished watching an episode of Shogun on Hulu where a man committed hara-kiri, ritual suicide, because a disagreement with his Japanese lord left him no other choice if he was to maintain his honor.

Death was on my mind, which probably explains why I suddenly began thinking about how sad I would be when my wife died. 

The relevance of this to my rediscovery of Douglas Harding's book, On Having No Head, which I wrote about a few days ago, is that I was almost totally immersed in my own thoughts about my wife dying, to such an extent that they seemed real, until I focused my attention on the world outside my head.

As soon as I returned to looking at the white porcelain of our sink, and the toothbrush filled with toothpaste that I was holding in my hand, the sorrow I had conjured in my mind vanished. The world was much more real than my imagination, and I reacted accordingly.

What this taught me -- and this is a lesson that I keep learning over and over -- is the difference between how I imagine the world to be versus how it actually is. 

I worry about lots of stuff that never happens. I also find that lots of stuff happens that I never worried about, but disturbs me when it rears its unpleasant head. So in my wiser moments, I try to live in accord with what Harding says in On Having No Head. (By Space, he means the capacity for knowing that is awareness.)

This unknowing has no limits. It extends beyond what we perceive to all we feel and think and do. It is ceasing to know how to cope with life, where we are going, what to do after this immediate task is done, what's going to happen to us tomorrow, next week, next year.

It is walking one step at a time and blindfolded, in the assurance that the Space here -- which is nothing and knows nothing but Itself -- will nevertheless come up, moment by moment, with what's needed. It is living like the lilies of the field, taking no thought for the morrow, trusting our Source.

This is where Harding and I begin to part company, when he talks about the Source and God rather than sticking with the bare facts of open-minded awareness. Harding is on solid ground when he speaks about the phenomenology of "having no head," of our sense that consciousness itself is empty and pristine, while the contents of consciousness are full of diverse qualities. 

But when he crosses over into religious territory, drawing implications about the meaning of his "headless way" that aren't part of that experience itself, that Harding is on shaky ground. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the way he looks upon love in another of his books that I recently ordered from Amazon, Face to No-Face. In the first chapter, Harding talks about how as a youth brought up by a rigid fundamentalist Christian father who forbid him from reading anything but the Bible, he had come to believe that love is the cornerstone of life and the universe.

Sentiments like that usually leave me cold. They sound nice, but lack substance. I'm not attracted to a philosophy that sounds like it was written on a Hallmark Card. I liked what Harding says about love though, viewing it as the result of a mind, or awareness, focused on a person or thing in the world, not on our own inward self. 

In other words, we are headless for the object of our beheaded love. Our emptiness meets their fullness, and if they return our love, their emptiness meets our fullness. 

You want to love well the person you love. There's only one way truly to love that person. It is to disappear in his or her favor. We are built to give our lives for one another. This is an exquisite design for living, that we give our lives for one another.

I look at my young friend next to me here. The only way that I can receive his face is to die as Douglas and be resurrected as him. I guess it is the same for him. His gives his life for Douglas; I give my life for him. 

We are disappearing in each other's favor. We are built for loving. I'm not talking about the feeling. I'm talking about the ground from which love can grow and flourish. Here, I really am in receipt of him, not because I am a nice person, because I'm not.

Douglas is not a very nice person. My friend is not a perfect person, either. He looks pretty good, but he's not perfect. But he's built for loving.

This disappearance is real disappearance because when I look Here, not a molecule is left, let alone a cell, let alone some goo or chemical stuff -- as you saw for yourself when you looked at the Clarity where you are. There's no dust on this clear Window.

This is real death. It's a more complete death than the one the mortician deals with because he's left with some mess, something to get rid of. There's nothing to get rid of here. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he gave his life for his friend."

Well, those are lofty words, a bit too lofty and abstract for my liking. I look at things more simply and practically. 

When my wife has something to say to me, my loving response is to stop whatever I'm doing, try to shut up the chatter inside my head, and listen to her with an open attentive mind. Same applies to my Tai Chi class. Today, as every time I go to the class, I try to focus on what our instructor is saying, and what we are doing.

Sure, I also wonder about what I'm going to have for dinner, and I'm aware of the sciatica pain in my right leg which is worse when I'm standing still rather than moving. But in general, I figure that since I love Tai Chi and I love my Tai Chi class, the best way to express that love is being attentive to what's happening in the class, not to the going's on inside my head that are unrelated to Tai Chi.

I rediscover Douglas Harding's "headless" rediscovery of the obvious

Douglas Harding's classic book, On Having No Head, has the subtitle of Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious.

Well, as I said in a 2018 post, "'On Having No Head' has a few simple truths," I'd bought the book quite a few years prior, given it away because I wasn't overly impressed with it back then, then bought a revised edition after I heard Sam Harris talk about it on his Waking Up app.

The past few days I've been re-re-reading the book that I re-bought and re-read six years ago. That's a lot of "re's" for a book that is about the rediscovery of the obvious. Guess I've got a problem with obviousness.

Which isn't entirely true, since I liked the book in 2018 and I'm liking it even more now, assuming I can tell the difference between those likings. 

If you're not familiar with Harding's headlessness, here's an excerpt from my 2018 post about his book:

Here's the short version of what Harding experienced on a walk in the Himalayas, after he realized that he wasn't seeing his head (excerpt for a part of his nose).

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything - room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it as, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of "me," unstained by any observer. It's total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision, it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious.

My post of a few days ago was about looking without, not within, being the best spiritual advice. I mentioned Harding in that post, which spurred me to take another look at his book, since I really like the idea of having the world be my head as much as possible.

Of course, this is always the case, which is why Harding says his insight, and Zen, is so obvious. There's no world for us, or for anyone else, without consciousness. That's a given. It's how our consciousness and the world relate that is the interesting question.

Harding seems to have it right when he says that our adult consciousness looks outward at the world, but falls short when it looks inward in a falsely self-conscious manner, "aiming your arrows of attention at that insubstantial some-body, at that human appearance of yours which daily became more substantial for you, and soon was your identity card, our identity itself."

By contrast, as the seer with a more refined understanding, "you are again truly Self-conscious: but this time you penetrate that ring of appearances more deliberately and consistently, and begin to rest in What they are appearances of, in your Reality, which is your true Identity, your Presence-Absence, your Core and Source."

More and more often your arrows of attention, simultaneously aimed inwards and outwards, hit their mark. You are becoming adept at two-way looking -- at once looking in at No-thing and out at every-thing.

Of course, given how complex the human brain is, about a hundred billion neurons with trillions of connections, that "No-thing" is anything but, since our mind is the result of intense neurological activity, most of which is outside of our conscious awareness.

So it's more accurate to say that looking inwards, we find nothing substantial, unchanging, and independent. In the 2018 post I said that Harding's "insight also can be framed as a realization that there is no self residing within our psyche, and there is no free will belonging to that nonexistent self."

I like how Harding describes some of the changes in our everyday lives from his headless realization in a single lengthy sentence.

Typically, these will include an enlivening of the senses (raising the screen which muffles the plangency of sounds, dims the glow of colours, blurs forms, and filters out the loveliness shining in the "ugliest" places) and (to go with the sensory awakening) a complex of interrelated psychophysical changes -- including a sustained "whole-body" alertness in place of the "heady" intermittent source (as if one were poised through-and-through to run the race of one's life), a reduction of stress, particularly in the regions of the eyes and mouth and neck (as if one were at last letting them go), a progressive lowering of one's center of gravity (as if losing one's head were finding one's heart, and guts, and feet, which are now rooted in the Earth), a striking downward shift of one's breathing (as if it were a belly-function), and in fact a general come-down (as if all the good things one had vainly strained after in the heights were awaiting one in the depths).