Posted inReality Religions

Religious believers: Drop the similes and state the facts

The first job I had when I left graduate school was research associate at a medical school's Family Practice Department. I used to sit in on some training sessions for the residents who were on their way to becoming family doctors.One of the faculty members had a favorite saying: "Say it so your grandmother could understand it." Meaning, talk to your patients simply and directly. Don't use big words. No jargon.That was good advice -- leaving aside the mildly sexist grandmother reference. (Hey, it was 1973; we weren't so culturally correct back then.)I wish religious believers, including those who leave…
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Posted inMystics

Let’s put the mystery back into mysticism

I love mystery. It's something that can't be explained and isn't understood. I also love mysteries, books that center on a mystery which -- almost always -- is explained. But until it is, it isn't. A mystery remains mysterious until it is understood."Mysticism" sort of sounds like "mystery." However, according to the Great God Wikipedia, it's more about communing with or being aware of an ultimate reality/truth. So a mystic supposedly understands a mystery of some cosmic significance. Like...Whether metaphysical realities exist. What happens after we die. If consciousness is possible without a physical body. How the universe began. Whether…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Eastern brains are different from Western brains

The differences between Eastern and Western philosophy -- which includes religions with a corresponding bent -- are clear. Most people tilt one way or the other philosophically. I certainly have many more Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu/Vedanta books in my library than titles with a Western bent.However, I did write a book about a Greek philosopher, Plotinus. He didn't believe in a personal God, though, viewing reality in a rather "Eastern" fashion, yet generally expressing himself in an analytical "Western" manner.In an introductory chapter I talked about what I saw as the difference between a Western and an Eastern mind. Eight…
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Posted inReality Religions

Atheists and agnostics are open-minded

I'm open to the possibility that god or some other manifestation of the supernatural exists. I just don't see any convincing evidence of this. Being open-minded isn't the same as being gullible, as Greta Christina says in a great blog post, "Are Atheists Open-Minded?"For starters: "You have to have an open mind" is not the same as "Here's some good evidence for why my idea is right." Yes, it's good to have an open mind. How is that an argument for religion or spirituality being correct? I mean, if someone insisted that they had a three- inch- tall pink pony…
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Posted inBuddhism Science Taoism/Tai Chi

If there’s no “me,” I don’t have any problems

Following up on "My best guess about God" musings, I wanted to take another crack of getting down to the core of a whole lot of religiosity, spirituality, mysticism, and philosophy.My inspiration is Wei Wu Wei's "Open Secret," which I finished today. Like many books with a Zen, Buddhist, Taoist, Advaita, or non-dual slant, I passed through many stages of literary emotion while reading it.Interest. Irritation. Confusion. Agreement. Contentment. Bewilderment. To name a few.What kept me turning the pages were the glimpses of something intriguingly simple that the author, a.k.a. Terence Gray, was trying to communicate. It isn't an original…
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Posted inGod Reality

My best guess about God

Nobody knows what ultimate reality is, which religious believers call "God." All we have are guesses, some more defensible than others. Here's mine -- after some forty years of delving into mysticism, spirituality, religiosity, and philosophy. Subject to change, of course. If I've learned anything, it's that there's always more to learn. Or guess about.I'll be as pithy as possible, a shift from my usual wordiness.(1) God doesn't exist. Not in the sense of an all-knowing, all-powerful personal or individual consciousness. Or even a universal consciousness, though this is more likely than an anthropomorphic God.(2) The cosmos is, always has…
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Posted inGod Reality

Truth is greater than God

What should we choose, reality or belief? This was the theme of one of my first Church of the Churchless posts almost six years ago, "Just have faith."Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) BeliefAfter you open a door, you have to walk through it.…
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Posted inScience

A Theory of Everything is science’s mythical “God”

Often my journey from true believing to churchlessness has felt like an exciting amusement park ride. Descending from the heights of religious dogmatism, I'm both thrilled and unsettled by a sudden drop, Wheeeeee!, as beliefs drop out from under me. Then I hit a plateau and roll along comparatively smoothly until...Wow! Another free fall, as I realize that the spiritual philosophy I embraced after discarding an Eastern form of fundamentalism is still unduly faith-based. So I'm off on another abrupt descent, figuring that now maybe I've reached some sort of ontological ground floor where life's meaning, or the lack thereof,…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Psychedelics and placebos more effective than religion

For some churchless inspiration, check out Mark Morford's "Placebo effect beats out God, Prozac." He discusses the finding that anti-depressants are pretty much useless, except for cases of extreme depression. A sugar pill works as well as Prozac, if the patient believes he or she is getting the real deal.The placebo effect -- hereby defined as the sheer force of will and belief, of the mind's (and heart's) ability to heal and nurture itself sans external assistance -- applies to all sorts of constructs in our tortured modern world.Organized religion? Hell yes. Is your life flawed and painful? Are you…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Feeling something spiritual doesn’t mean it is real

Everybody has feelings, intuitions, hunches, gut-reactions. They always are real for us, because we're aware of them. Individual awareness equals subjective reality.Trouble is, many people make a big leap of faith: they assume that a personal experience reflects a universal truth. Like, God. Or spirit, soul, Jesus' love, heaven, a guru's greatness, or whatever.Thanks to a post on The Rambling Taoist, a blog I follow, today I came across a terrific piece by Greta Christina, "Why 'I Feel It In My Heart' Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence."Showing that I've haven't quite reached the final stages of egoless Buddha-nature,…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi Vedanta/Advaita

Focus on experiences or the experiencer? The big spiritual divide.

When we get down to the essence of religion, spirituality, and mysticism, it seems to me that the broad divide between various sorts of faiths can be boiled down to this question:Is the focus on experiences, or the experiencer?This isn't an either/or, a crisp choice between one or the other. Still, Zen and Advaita Vedanta are decidedly on the experiencer side. Meaning, what's more important is how the consciousness of a practitioner perceives reality, not what is perceived.Pouring a cup of tea (or for me, sipping a mug of coffee) is as significant, or not, as soaring to the highest…
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Posted inHumor Religions

My 100% guaranteed spiritual investment scheme

With all the talk going on these days about sleazy financial deal-making, I've been wondering why Wall Street doesn't hire more religious experts. They seem even better suited than mathematical wizards to be able to fashion can't-miss investment schemes.By "can't-miss," naturally I'm referring to the 100% certainty that the purveyor of the deal will profit. As is so often the case, the poor suckers who buy into it aren't guaranteed anything -- which is why the scheme is structured as it is.There are lots of variations on the religious "Invest Now and Reap the Rewards Later" pitch. I'm most familiar…
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Posted inMorality

Morality shouldn’t depend on the supernatural

How do we decide what is right and wrong? Is there even such a thing, or just "right" and "wrong"? Who are we trying to please, or relate to, when we act ethically, outwardly or inwardly?All intriguing questions, which are ably addressed by anthropologist David Eller in his "Christianity Does Not Provide the Basis for Morality." This is a chapter in a book I'm reading, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails.Every religion is deluded, of course -- not just Christianity. Likewise, no religion, spiritual belief, or mystical practice can provide the basis for morality. Eller shows how they all make…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Spiritual practice/meditation

Getting small: solution to all of my problems?

Last week I heard a Taoist scholar/practitioner say, "Feel small, and your problems will be small." Makes sense. A similar intuition has been taking root in me since embracing the non-faith of churchlessness six or so years ago.Most religions teach that bigger is better. We're supposed to expand our consciousness, rise up to heaven, grow in spiritual understanding, enlarge our connection with God.I used to enjoy the feeling that my devotional practices enjoined by a religious organization -- meditation, volunteering, vegetarianism, tee-totaling, and such -- were helping me to become more.More detached from this lower world of materiality. More attached…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Taoism and imagination

Reality is what it is. That's difficult, if not impossible, to argue with. And it's a central proposition of Taoism, which is one reason I'm so attracted to this philosophy.We humans like to name things, conceptualize things, analyze things. But what if something isn't really a "thing"? Then how do we relate to it? Like, the universe, the cosmos, the whole shebang. Not a piece of it, which could reasonably be viewed as a thing. Rather, the entire mysterious ungraspable stupendous all-encompassing entirety of everything -- that can't be divided into this thing and that thing.A few days ago I…
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Posted inReligions

Believers need to take the “Outsider Test for Faith”

Why and how do religious believers choose to accept a particular faith out of the many choices available to them? (4200 is one estimate)Great question. Here's an ever better one: What makes someone confident that the religion they've chosen is true, while all the other religions are false?John W. Loftus examines these issues in a book he edited, "The Christian Delusion." The first chapter I read was by Loftus, "The Outsider Test for Faith Revisited." He used to be a minister, until his deconversion.I loved the chapter. It lays out problems with religious belief that I've been aware of for…
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Posted inBuddhism

My super-simple view of Buddhism

Yesterday, during my Tai Chi class, I had an insightful flash moment that encapsulated how I look upon Buddhism (and also other forms of spirituality) these churchless days.We started off by doing the Yang Long Form. I'm familiar with the form, which, not surprisingly, is long. About twenty minutes worth of prescribed movements, though we usually breeze through the form a bit more quickly.Tai Chi often is described as "moving meditation." Yeah, it seems that way to me. Just as when I do my unmoving meditation, sometimes while doing Tai Chi my mind is calm and centered, and other times…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB’s ties to Religare mix money and spirituality

As shown in my previous post, there's an intimate relationship between Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious/mystical organization headquartered in India, and Religare -- a large global financial services group.The current RSSB guru is Gurinder Singh Dhillon. His sons, though only 26 and 20 years old, are among the 400 richest Indians owing to millions of Religare shares having been transferred to them at a very low cost via insider trading deals.And the guru himself has acquired about half a million dollars worth of Religare shares in a similar fashion. (For details on all this, read "Religare's money connections…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Religare’s money connections with the Radha Soami guru

Religious institutions often have an intimate relationship with money. The hugely rich Catholic Church comes to mind, naturally. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. People simply should be aware when spirituality gets tangled up with financial dealings, and make up their own minds about what, if anything, it means to them. In that spirit, someone forwarded me an email message regarding Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) that reportedly has been circulating among members of this India-based organization. RSSB, as a branch of the Sant Mat ("Path of Saints") religious philosophy, is led by a guru who is considered by the…
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Posted inReligions

“Hidden brain” shows how religion traps people

Humans are social creatures. We are drawn toward conforming with what other people are doing. Being a "lone wolf" usually is less comfortable than being part of a group. Sometimes herd-like behavior pays off. It surely did for our ancestors, or evolution wouldn't have produced such powerful pressures to go along and get along in us. If a saber-toothed tiger is attacking, running off by yourself likely isn't the favored survival strategy. Safety in numbers is the watchword in such situations. But not in others, as Shankar Vedantam shows in an intriguing chapter of "The Hidden Brain,"  a book I've…
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