Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

What if a “guru” is no different from us?

When I was a member of an India-based spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the guru who led the organization frequently would say, "We need teachers in every aspect of life. Mysticism and spirituality are no different."Here's the problem with that statement: if I can't tell whether a person is more competent at something than I am, why should I accept him/her as a guide, teacher, consultant, handyman, or whatever?I got to thinking about this today after reading a response to a comment on a blog post about financial dealings of the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh. Tucson, a…
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Posted inScience

Embrace hard truth rather than reassuring faith

When I was an active member of an India-based religious/mystical group, a word that inspired me was sat. It means "truth," and was used in many ways: satsangi (follower of truth), satguru (conveyor of truth), satsang (speaking of truth), and so on.Eventually I realized that my allegiance really was to truth, not to a particular dogma, philosophy, or practice. If my involvement with the group wasn't leading me closer to truth, the goal I'd set for myself wasn't being realized.So I set off on a churchless path. I decided to genuinely commit myself to the tenets of the scientific method,…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Religions are wrong about self-realization

There's a lot of talk about self-realization in religious circles, mostly of the Eastern variety. The India-based spiritual group that I was a member of for many years promoted the idea, "self-realization before God-realization."In the West, self-realization has much more of a secular connotation. Regardless, many people have a simplistic notion of the "self" that supposedly is to be known via meditation, mystic practice, prayer, psychotherapy, or some other means.Modern neuroscience has demolished the fantasy that the essence of a human being is something open to view under the right circumstances, like a jewel wrapped in layers of cloth that…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Reality is a boat without oars

Yesterday a regular visitor to this blog, tucson, left a comment on a post that deserved more attention than it likely was going to get. (Irritatingly, TypePad, my blog service, doesn't take a click on a "recent comments" link directly to the comment, only to the post; tucson's comment was on an old post with hundreds of comments on multiple pages, so it was hard to find).Here's what tucson had to say in response to a previous comment by "Neitzsche" that talked about the guru of an Eastern religious organization (RSSB), Gurinder Singh. I thought tucson's advice to Neitzsche was…
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Posted inScience Universe

Finding our place in a factual cosmos

There's only one thing wrong with religious cosmologies: they aren't true. And that's a pretty damn serious thing. Which is why we shouldn't take erroneous views of the universe seriously.Yet we humans are meaning-creatures. Bare facts aren't enough for us. Our highly evolved minds love to construct stories about what life is all about, what's most important for us to do, and other value-laden layerings that provide a increased depth to our existence.The choice each of us faces is how realistic our "myths" are. Now, that word, myth, doesn't need to refer to something untrue. There's another way of regarding…
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Posted inUncategorized

This is a blog for the churchless, not the churched

Hey, true believing religiously-minded visitors to this blog, it's time for a reminder, as unnecessary as this should be, given the name at the top of every page: Church of the Churchless.Get it? Churchless. That means not belonging to an organized religion, spiritual path, mystic practice, or such. That means thinking for yourself, believing for yourself, finding a life meaning for yourself, seeking out truth for yourself.Also, it means not accepting ready made answers from a holy book, revered guru, or other source that demands blind faith rather than open-eyed skepticism. Nor does it mean rejecting scientific facts because they…
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Posted inBooks

Jon Stewart sucks up to religion, sadly

Oh, Jon, you failed me. My wife and I watch The Daily Show almost every night, and we enjoy your skewering of political, religious, and other varieties of pretentiousness.But last night your interview with Marilynne Robinson, author of "Absence of Mind," was pathetically weak. PZ Myers, an avid defender of science and attacker of religiosity, also felt let down by you. The low point came as Stewart tried to justify Robinson's nebulous argument that science and religion need each other, and he offered stock apologetics.The more you delve into science, the more it relies on faith.No, it doesn't. The less…
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Posted inGod

God’s curious ultimate subjectivity

For almost six years I've been asking true believers of various faiths if they can provide any demonstrable evidence that God exists. (Any "God," personal or impersonal, monistic or dualistic, I'm not particular.)Not surprisingly -- given the still ongoing vigorous debate concerning this subject after some 10,000 years of recorded human history -- I've never gotten a convincing answer.But this doesn't stop the religious from believing in God. Often I hear, "I just know that God exists. Don't ask me for proof. I just know." OK, I'll respond, good for you. But your subjective experience is only true for you,…
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Posted inReligions

What’s churchlessly cool about Judaism (and, not)

I've never rank-ordered the major world religions on how appealing they are to me. Maybe I'll do that after finishing Stephen Prothero's "God is Not One," a book I've blogged about here and here.Prothero's clear descriptions of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, et.al. are helping me to better understand what turns me on, and off, about them. There's something to like in every religion, even if only a little (so far, Islam is my least favorite).This morning I finished the chapter on Judaism. I've always been intrigued by this religion, in large part because, as Prothero points out, Jews are exceedingly brilliant…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Why God can’t be found

The shortest, simplest, and likely most accurate answer to the question, "Why can't God be found?," is: because God doesn't exist. We also can't find unicorns, leprechauns, or the Tooth Fairy (hope my granddaughter isn't reading this post) for what almost certainly is the same reason.They don't exist.But for the sake of argument let's assume that some entity which reasonably could be called "God" does exist. Don't ask me to define that term, "God," because it isn't possible. An understanding of God comes at the end of the search for him/her/it, not before.And that brings us to the biggest problem…
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Posted inReality Science

John Burroughs’ appealing scientific pantheism

Whenever I take one of those quizzes that tell you what religion/ philosophy melds best with your beliefs, pantheism always ends up close to the top. That makes sense. I've got a naturalistic view of the universe, but I also have a powerful sense of awe when I contemplate the cosmos -- either in its incomprehensibly vast totality, or the mystery of how a single flower has come to be.Today I came across a mention of John Burroughs in "The Quotable Atheist," a book I pick up regularly for some churchless inspiration. The Burroughs quotes I liked the most were…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Sant Mat’s close connection with Hinduism

Sant Mat is a spiritual system historically centered in northern India, but which now has spread internationally, with initiates of various Sant Mat gurus scattered around the world. It often is billed as a "science of the soul" that transcends religious boundaries and distinctions. For example, the branch of Sant Mat that I was a member of for thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), has published books that show the purported connection between Sant Mat and Christianity, as well as Sant Mat and Judaism.This requires considerable leaps of faith, though, and some creative reinterpreting of Bible verses. The commonalities…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

The spirituality of my sickness

I don't get sick very often. So the past five days -- during which I've been suffering through a feverish flu/cold gifted to me by my three year old granddaughter, who, as you can see below, doesn't look capable of such a dastardly deed -- have cast me into an unfamiliar state of consciousness. Ever eager to suck some philosophical insights out of any sort of experience, I wanted to share a few thoughts from the not-quite-well side of my psyche while I was still doing some serious coughing.What I've found most interesting about being sick is this: in many…
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Posted inPolitics

“Saint” Sarah Palin shows danger of mixing religion & politics

Often people say, "What's the harm if people believe in whatever religion they want to, no matter how weird it might seem to others?" Well, here's a good example of some harm: the June 21, 2010 cover of Newsweek. The caption under the photo of Palin with a halo and hands prayerfully folded reads:Saint SarahWhat Palin's appeal to conservative Christian women says about feminism and the future of the religious right.I've been told by a friend who was born in Germany, visits Europe regularly, and keeps up on European goings-on directly via reading online news sources that politicians in Europe…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Be as little as you can be…and real

"Be All You Can Be" was a longstanding slogan of the United States Army. I like it, though the big question is what that all consists of. (In part, clearly, a soldier.) Compared to the cosmos, "not much."I used to be pretty darn grandiose in my spiritual goals. The organization I was a member of, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, taught that it was possible -- indeed, imperative -- to experience God as a living inner presence.At the core of the RSSB philosophy is a belief that there is a spiritual purpose to human life – to experience the divinity of…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Why we’re all Muslims (a teeny, tiny bit)

I'm making my way through Stephen Prothero's "God is Not One," a book about how the eight major religions of the world are not at all the same -- much more like roads that head off in different directions than paths leading to the same summit.In my first post about "God is Not One" after only reading the introduction, I predicted that I'd like Prothero's book. I was right. The next chapter on Islam was clearly written and offered up some fresh insights on what the author considers to be the world's most influential religion.Here's what struck me the most…
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Posted inScience Universe

The universe is expanding into nothing

For a long time I've been fascinated by the fact that our universe is expanding because of the Big Bang that brought it into existence. I've visualized an edge to the universe, where a incomprehensibly vast tidal wave of raw existence cascades onward, into...What? This is the question that always stymied me. What is the universe expanding into, if the universe is all that exists? Or at least, all that we know to exist. Even if we say the universe is expanding into nothing, doesn't "nothing" thereby become a something?The marvelous mind-blowing nature of these cogitations is one reason why…
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Posted inBooks God

“God is Not One” shows how different religions are

A few days ago I was drawn to buy "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero after seeing Stephen Colbert interview him in Colbert's always entertaining fashion. Prothero gives his take on the interview here, and you can watch it below.The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cStephen Protherowww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox NewsI liked how Prothero emphasized how different are the problems religions attempt to solve. Christianity is all about being saved from sin; Buddhism aims to eliminate suffering; Hinduism seeks freedom from reincarnation's rounds of birth and death; Daoism teaches how to live life naturally and freely.(If you're…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

If I’m a guru, where are my devotees?

A few days ago I got an email from someone who thinks that I've become a guru. That struck me as a strange thing to say. After all, I'm not aware of anyone in the world who views me that way (certainly not my wife, and definitely not my dog -- except when she wants to go on a walk or get her favorite chew stick treat, when she'll temporarily get a look of absolute devotion to manipulate me into doing her canine bidding).My correspondent asked for a blog response, so here it is. I've interspersed my comments in regular…
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Posted inScience Universe

Finding meaning in an accidental universe

Looking around, the universe seems to be flowingly interconnected, a seamless web of smoothly functioning laws of nature. Sure, there are lots of nasty things we humans find distasteful -- earthquakes, diseases, tornadoes, and such -- but even these have causes. They're just often extremely difficult to discern or predict, given our lack of knowledge about the details of how things operate in the world.But there's another way of looking at the cosmos. Here's an excerpt from the jacket on Marcelo Gleiser's "A Tear at the Edge of Creation," a book that I blogged about before. (Subtitle: a radical new…
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