Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Is meditation different from simply living life?

For about two-thirds of my life -- from the age of 21 to my current 61 -- I've meditated almost every day. By "almost," I mean that during those forty years I can recall only a couple of times I didn't put in at least twenty minutes of meditation time. And usually it was more like a couple of hours.I've been a big believer in the benefits of meditation. But I've begun to wonder whether my dedication to sitting still with eyes closed, usually concentrating on a mantra (or simply doing as little as possible mentally), makes as much sense…
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Posted inVedanta/Advaita

What’s wrong with change and concepts?

After I put up a post about Deepak Chopra's misunderstanding of quantum theory, Suzanne left a comment pointing me to Stanley Sobottka's website, "A Course in Consciousness." Sobottka is an emeritus (retired) professor of physics. I enjoyed reading the short version of his course, a 75-slide Power Point presentation. I was curious to see whether his philosophical/spiritual take on quantum physics made more sense than Chopra's.The jury inside my head is still out on that question. After I finished reading the slides, my impression was interesting, but not persuasive. Meaning, I didn't come across any grand insights that weren't already…
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Posted inScience

Deepak Chopra challenged by quantum physicist

I used to enjoy Deepak Chopra a lot more than I do now. I don't know whether he has changed, or whether I've changed. Probably it's both.My impression of him used to be that he was a spiritual maverick, someone who sifted out the crap from religiosity and rejected just have faith dogma. But I've come to see him as a New Age entrepreneur who makes big bucks by peddling his own brand of irrational, unbelievable pseudoscience.This view was strengthened by watching Nightline's most recent "face off," Does God Have a Future? Chopra was the champion of the "yes" side.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

The craziest thing I’ve ever believed

Recently I asked myself, "Brian, what's the craziest thing you've ever believed?" Since I was an active member of an Indian mystical guru-based meditation organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), for over thirty years, quite a few candidate beliefs came to mind. Here's the winner: I used to accept the distinct possibility, if not likelihood, that when I was initiated by the RSSB guru back in 1971, Master Charan Singh placed a metaphysical "double" of himself, a radiant form, within my consciousness. Or being. Or soul. Or something like that.It wasn't very clear where or how this magic act was performed.…
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Posted inBooks

Our “hidden brain” casts new light on religious certainty

Shankar Vedantam's book "The Hidden Brain" is subtitled how our unconscious minds elect presidents, control markets, wage wars, and save our lives. I'd add: and choose our favored form of spirituality or religion (or lack thereof).I've only read the first few chapters of The Hidden Brain. But my wife, a retired psychotherapist, has listened to the audio book in its entirety. She gave it high marks, so I decided to order a hardcover copy. Vedantam's basic premise is solid. It's backed up by lots of scientific research. (Vedantam writes the Washington Post's "Department of Human Behavior" column, so he knows…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

Doing nothing is the best meditation

The title above is my theory, at least, as discussed in my marvelously cogent, persuasive, and uplifting post "Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become."Well, let's make that cogent, persuasive, and uplifting to me. Who is the person I'm most concerned with making sense to. That said, I'm always interested in learning the specifics of how other people approach meditation or some other form of spiritual practice. "Specifics," as noted in that previous writing, is the watchword.More and more, I'm into specifics when it comes to spirituality. I've spent a lifetime floating in the philosophical, theological, and…
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Posted inScience Vedanta/Advaita

Deep dreamless sleep isn’t my mystical goal

I've often wondered why the state of deep dreamless sleep is so appealing to some mystically-inclined people. Since we're dead to the world -- both inner and outer -- seemingly the only difference between deep dreamless sleep and death is that we wake up from sleeping. I can understand wanting to experience a mystical super-consciousness, but why aspire to unconsciousness?The Indian Upanishads probably are largely responsible for the high marks given to deep dreamless sleep. For example:The third quarter is prājña, where one asleep neither desires anything nor beholds any dream: that is deep sleep. In this field of dreamless…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

One wild and precious life

Thanks to fellow Oregon blogger Rain, I came across this image and adapted excerpt from Mary Oliver's poem, "The Summer Day." Nice. Read the short poem, which a poetry blog says is about the act of attention being a form of prayer. I liked the poem's ending -- a bit different from the words in the wave-tossed image:Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
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Posted inFundamentalism Politics

Texas dismisses Thomas Jefferson from schools

We didn't need more evidence that religious fundamentalists are dangerous wackos who seek to undermine American freedom and independence -- but, sadly, here it is:The Texas State Board of Education removed Thomas Jefferson from the school curriculum, replacing him with John Calvin, who, not surprisingly, also was a religious wacko.Jefferson, on the other hand, held unconventional Christian beliefs and strongly argued for the separation of church and state. He also, of course, was the third president of the United States, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.But…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Life without God is more meaningful

Bart Ehrman once was a devout evangelical Christian. Now he's an agnostic scholar who debunks religious myths. Today on my car radio I heard a snippet of an NPR interview with him.Ehrman was asked how his life had changed now that he doesn't believe in heaven, hell, and life after death any more. He answered that it had become much more meaningful. Ehrman no longer expects to enjoy (or fear) another life after this one.This is it. One chance. Enjoy it while you can. Make the most of every moment.That's how I've come to feel also. But for a while,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Become a better person first, a perfect divine being second

Often people attracted to spirituality want to skip the whole human being thing and jump directly into some supposed metaphysical realm. Christians base their lives on being saved and getting a pass to enter heaven after death; Buddhists, Hindus, and other "Eastern" practitioners envision enlightenment, nirvana, god realization, or whatever as being an escape from the illusions of the material universe.Well, there might be a transcendental reality, despite the lack of evidence. But for sure there is a physical world, which we all are living in now, doing our best to deal with the difficulties of being human.Sickness and health.…
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Posted inGod Universe

Best reason why God doesn’t exist

Does God exist? People have been trying to answer this question for thousands of years. As I wrote about in this post, a philosophical novel sets out 36 arguments for the existence of God (listed here; scroll down to read them).Arguments for the non-existence of God aren't as common. It's tough to prove that something doesn't exist, especially when that entity is supposed to be metaphysical, mysterious, and not particularly eager to reveal itself in an obvious fashion.I usually argue that it isn't possible to prove that God is non-existent. Instead, we agnostics and atheists are justified in asking for…
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Posted inGod

So many arguments for God’s existence; all flawed

Here's a mini-miracle that happened to me yesterday: I'm in a Barnes & Noble store and see a new hardcover book: "36 Arguments for the Existence of God -- a work of fiction."I'm attracted to buy it. Handing it to the checkout clerk, I hear him say: "Hey, a friend of mind is reading this. He loves it." Cosmic! What are the chances...Actually, quite good. I suspect that people who work in book stores tend to read more books than the average person. And it figures that their friends would also. I'm buying a philosophical novel whose central character is…
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Posted inBuddhism

If soul is real, we’ll never know

Lots of people believe in what philosophers call "mind-body dualism." Or if they're mystically or religiously inclined, they'll say that the soul is the non-physical side of who we are.Regardless, this is a dualistic view of life. It's nothing new. Plato was a dualist, as was Descartes. Nowadays, science has discredited the notion that human consciousness has a metaphysical aspect. Mind states clearly are related to brain states. There's no convincing evidence that consciousness exists separate from a body.Yet belief in an immaterial soul or mind that survives physical death is still widespread. Most Christians believe this. So do most…
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Posted inMystics Personal/Stories

The sheer strangeness of everything

Sanity is consensual. If there's someone else who sees the world in the same way I do, that gives me at least a little bit of confidence that I'm not way out in weirdo-world -- though I'm not saying that would be a bad thing.This morning I came across a passage in Stephen Bachelor's new book, "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist," that echoed sensations I have frequently these churchless days, and tried to describe at the end of my "Mysticism doesn't have to be mystical" post.Here's how Bachelor says it:One evening at dusk, as I was returning to my room…
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Posted inHumor

“This Too Shall Pass” could be secret of universe

I can't explain why, but I'm pretty sure this You Tube video contains the secret of the universe. Watching it, I had an overwhelming feeling of "Yes! That's exactly what life is all about!" However, I still have no idea what life is all about. Just that whatever it is, this is how it works.
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Posted inMystics

Mysticism doesn’t have to be mystical

For most of my life -- age 18 to 55, or thereabouts -- I've been an avid embracer of mysticism. During my psychedelic period, I wasn't only aiming at getting high via LSD, mescaline, and such. Along with many other flower children, I also was trying to experience a higher form of consciousness. We'd ponder the Tibetan Book of the Dead, then see if we could experience some of the bardos via a pill rather than meditation. After a few years I stopped using drugs and devoted myself to meditating several hours a day with the same intent: learning whether…
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Posted inMystics

Mystic atheism is a cool non-belief

I've found a new way to describe myself philosophically: mystic atheist. Along with agnostic, humanist,Taoist, and existentialist. 

Maybe I'll make up a non-business card with this title, since it fits with my non-belief system. The card would stimulate some interesting conversations when I handed it out, I bet.

Thanks for discovering mystic atheist go to two people: one guy who emailed me about another guy. The first wanted to tell me about "Kissing Hank's Ass," a marvelous irreligious fable that I'd already blogged about several years ago.

The second is James Huber, who wrote the piece. When I followed the email link to his web site, I noticed a couple of other writings that looked interesting. "Mystic Atheism" then led me to "Materialistic Enlightenment."

Interestingly, I'd mentioned "Mystic Atheism" in my 2006 blog post about "Kissing Hank's Ass." But I guess I wasn't ready to appreciate it's profundity back then.

Now that I've reached a higher stage of mystic atheist materialistic enlightenment, I'm better able to resonate with Huber's insights — an excerpt from which you can read a few paragraphs down in a continuation to this post.

I love how he speaks about a "presence" that he sensed when he was experiencing some form of religiosity or spirituality. Eventually he realized that this presence was the common denominator between all religions and spiritual paths:

Everyday physical reality.

What I understood in that shining moment were that all the mystic
experiences I had ever had could easily be unified with a single,
simple principle: they're all 99.9% bullshit. What truth they hold is
simple, ordinary, reality. They look exotic and mysterious because they
go to great lengths to hide reality. The truth at the center of all
religion shines through despite the metaphysical trappings, not because
of them.

Read on, and you'll find out that God spoke to Huber, revealing that God doesn't exist. Ah, that's my kind of enlightenment.

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Posted inReligions

Religious belief, Dumbo, and the placebo effect

After reading a fascinating article in Newsweek about how antidepressants appear to be no more effective than a placebo, I got to wondering whether religions operate the same way.Patients on a placebo improved about 75 percent as much as those on drugs. Put another way, three quarters of the benefit from antidepressants seems to be a placebo effect.When people believe that a placebo -- a sham medical intervention -- is an effective treatment, that belief often is self-fulfilling. Meaning, they get better because they believed they should get better.How this happens is largely a mystery. But there are some promising…
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Posted inGod

If “God” is mystery, there’s no pointing to God

Religion is strange. Most faiths teach that God, or whatever the highest divinity is called, is transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, incapable of being described in words.Yet these faiths also aren't shy about using a whole lot of words, concepts, dogmas, and such to tell us what God is like and why it is so important to believe in Him, Her, or It. They want to have their cake of mystery and eat it too.Obviously there are degrees to which something can be precisely described. We can analyze the chemical composition of a strawberry, measure it, photograph it, write reams about it.But…
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