Posted inConsciousness Reality

Imagining the impossible is a cool feature of human minds, but it creates philosophical enigmas

I'm enjoying Michael Pollan's new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. My first post about it came after I'd finished the Introduction, also called The Wager. Now I've read the first chapter, Sentience. After that comes Feeling, Thought, Self, and The Cave. While I don't expect Pollan to clear up the mysteries surrounding consciousness in his book, going along with him on his journey will be enjoyable. He's got a knack for making complex ideas understandable, and for describing fresh takes on old problems. That's what I'm going to focus on in this post, a fresh take on…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Just 10 minutes of meditation results in significant benefits

For 35 years I belonged to an Eastern religion whose teachings required 2 1/2 hours of meditation a day. The reason for that length of time wasn't made very clear. Typically the religion's guru would say that we should "tithe" one-tenth of the day to God-realization, or 2.4 hours. Rounded off, 2.5 hours. For many years I put in that time. Eventually, though, I came to feel that quality was as important as quantity in meditation. Then I typically meditated for about an hour every day, usually in the morning. However, I was aware that the guru who initiated me…
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Posted inConsciousness Reality

All knowledge is a product of human consciousness, not reality itself

Having just written quite a few blog posts about In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, a fascinating book that delves into how physics, neuroscience, and philosophy look upon our sense of time, and indeed reality itself, I'm equally enthused about diving into consciousness -- the subject of Michael Pollan's new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. I enjoy books by skilled science writers who take a broader look at some subject than a specialist in that field would. For one thing, science writers usually are more adept at making a subject…
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Posted inBuddhism Neuroscience Reality

We need a philosophical and spiritual Copernican revolution

The Copernican Revolution in astronomy corrected the mistaken belief that our Earth was the center of the solar system. Instead, the Sun took its rightful place there in the minds of humans. That was one step in understanding our correct place in the cosmos. Another came when astronomers realized that what seemed to be objects within our Milky Way galaxy actually were other galaxies, each containing tens or hundreds of billions of stars. Now we know there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. All that should make us feel very small in the grand scheme of things.…
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Posted inReality Science Universe

QBism is the most mind-blowing scientific view of reality I’ve ever encountered

What is reality? This is a really important question. Maybe the most important question of all. It's also a really difficult question to answer. Humans have been attempting this throughout recorded history. And probably long before, extending to the first time one of our prehistoric ancestors looked upon the world and thought something like, What's this all about? Most of us, me certainly included, either consciously or unconsciously view reality as being comprised of two main branches: objective and subjective. This was a focus of the first book I wrote, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, where I attempted to relate principles…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

Flow — the marvelous blend of body and mind, exemplified in an amazing video

There's words about flow. And there's the experience of flow. Both help us understand what flow is all about. But a video I learned about in the "Surfing the Moment" chapter of In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant provides an unforgettable vision of flow. Here's how Marchant describes the video. In a seven-minute online film called 'The Ridge', Scottish trials cyclist Danny MacAskill rows across a remote loch on the Isle of Skye before hauling his mountain bike out of the boat onto the windswept beach. Once in the saddle, he wheels away…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Neuroscience

Epilepsy and meditation: two paths to “everything is as it should be”

So, I was reading along in In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, which I've been blogging about recently, and came to a passage that reminded me of a post I wrote a few weeks ago, "What if everything is okay just as it is?" I described the feeling: There are moments when we look upon life not as a series of problems to be solved, but as a complete answer lacking even the need for a question. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. These can lead to such moments. So can meditation, nature, exercise,…
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Posted inAtheism God Religions

Though no gods would be ideal, many gods are preferable to one god

As I wrote about on my HinesSight blog yesterday, the Artemis II voyage around the moon that ended with a splashdown in the Pacific yesterday showed the inspiring best of science and technology, while the Iran war negotiations are a disturbing reflection of the worst of humanity. It was beautiful to see the photographs of Earth from space, which naturally showed no dividing lines between nations. Astronaut Victor Glover said during the voyage to the moon: “Trust us, you look amazing, you look beautiful. And from up here, you also look like one thing. Homo sapiens, all of us, no…
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Posted inAwareness Mindfulness Neuroscience

Past and future are optional concepts, since some cultures lack them

Most of us worry a lot about both our past and future, even though the past is gone and the future has yet to occur. We do our best to live in Now, the present moment, but often the past and future occupy such a big part of our mental real estate, the present gets squeezed into a relatively small corner. One reason I'm liking In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant so much (the subject of several recent blog posts) is that the book points to some provocative ideas about our usual sense…
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Posted inNeuroscience Spiritual practice/meditation

Everyday awareness isn’t optimal. Psychedelics are one way to improve things.

Continuing with my posts about In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, my reading of the book brought me to a subject that was dear to my heart back in my college days: how psychedelics like LSD and mescaline can open the mind to an expanded view of reality. Marchant had been describing how what seems to be the present moment actually is infused by the brain with both our past experiences and predictions of the future. I shared some passages about this in my previous post about In Search of Now. She then…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics Religions

Easter means nothing to me, but like hockey, I’m fine with others enjoying it

I almost forgot what today is, Easter Sunday. The main reason I was reminded of it came when the long-time friend I have coffee with every Sunday at 1 pm texted me this morning, saying our local coffee shop probably would be closed. Which it was. So we went to pleasingly secular Starbucks. On the way there, I saw that a church had its usual large sign up on the side of the building: "He Is Risen." When I mentioned this to my friend, he said, "Like sourdough bread." Clever. I was going to steal that line, but decided to…
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Posted inNeuroscience Reality Uncategorized

Reality is different from how we humans perceive reality

In my previous post about In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, I focused on her totally scientific observation that according to Einstein's extremely well proven relativity theory, the past, present, and future are all the same -- in the sense that each is part of a single "block universe" in which every event, from the motion of a single particle to the movement of a gigantic galaxy, is captured in a four dimensional space-time continuum that simply is. Of course, this perspective is utterly unlike how the world, and our life, appears to…
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Posted inBooks Free will Reality

According to Einstein, past, present, and future are all the same

After reading the Introduction and first three chapters of In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, I'm hugely enjoying this book that pushes all of my nonfiction literary buttons: scientific, personal, well-written, provocative. I have a hint of where Marchant is going to end up in her book from reading her New Scientist article that I wrote about in "Intriguing idea: reality is stitched together from interlocking perspectives and experiences." But what I'm looking forward to is how Marchant builds a case for what she admits is a decidedly minority scientific view of the…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

What if everything is okay just as it is?

This is going to be an unusually short blog post for typically wordy me. For a couple of reasons. One is that I jotted down the title of this post on a small scrap of paper a few days ago, along with a few related ideas. Not much to expand upon, really. Another is that even if I wanted to expand on what if everything is okay just as it is?, I'm not sure if there's anything more to say on this subject. I mean, what if what I said is actually true? That would be wonderful. It would make…
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Posted inReality Science

Intriguing idea: reality is stitched together from interlocking perspectives and experiences

Reality. It's everything that exists. Simple enough. Seemingly. But the reality is that reality is fiendishly difficult to define, figure out, get a handle on, tie down. Philosophers have debated the nature of reality for thousands of years. Humans, surely, for much longer. And modern science, even with all of its accomplishments, continues to struggle with what reality is, and isn't. So when the most recent issue of New Scientist arrived today, I took a look at the cover and knew that I'd have to read the Welcome to the Pluriverse article right away, because the subtitle, Forget the multiverse…
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Posted inAwareness Buddhism

I love reality as it is, and I also love reality as it isn’t

I've been thinking about my previous post, "Magical realism is an apt term both for Zen, and for life as a whole." Mostly the post was excerpts from a chapter about magical realism in a book by a Zen teacher, James Ishmael Ford. I said, "He makes a lot of sense here." I still feel that way, though now that I've finished Zen at the End of Religion, I stand by my statement that it isn't one of my favorite Zen books. Probably this is partly because I'm not as interested in Zen now as I was for most of…
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Posted inBuddhism

Magical realism is an apt term both for Zen, and for life as a whole

To most of us, certainly me included, there's magic (fake, but often captivating), and then there's reality (genuine, but often boring). Yet like so many apparent dualisms, there's good reason to view magical realism as a notion that blends the best of two seeming incompatibilities. That's how Zen teacher James Ishmael Ford views things in his book, Zen at the End of Religion: An Introduction for the Curious, the Skeptical, and the Spiritual But Not Religious. I'm almost finished with the book. It's not among my favorite Zen books, but there's quite a bit to like about it. My first posts…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB secret initiation meditation is public Sikh scripture

Here’s another guest blog post from Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years, which explains my interest in sharing criticisms of the faith that I also found lacking. This post strikes me as being less of a criticism of RSSB, and more as a history lesson that illustrates how RSSB grew out of longstanding Sikh tradition, rather than being a unique mystical faith. Of course, this is obvious to most RSSB initiates, since passages from the Sikh scripture (Adi Granth,…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics

Defense Secretary Hegseth thinks God is on U.S. side. Iran thinks the opposite. Both are wrong.

When I saw the title of a story in today's New York Times, "Hegseth Invokes Divine Purpose to Justify Military Might," I knew this was a 2 for 1 blog post issue. Meaning, I could criticize two entities that I despise in a single swoop: (1) the Trump administration in general, and Defense Secretary Hegseth in particular, and (2) fundamentalist Christian dogma. Hegseth is like a cartoon character who somehow is able to head up the United States armed forces. He prances around, trying to act all macho, yet is so vain recently he banned photographers from his briefings because…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB: guru is not a guru

Here’s another guest blog post from Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years, which explains my interest in sharing criticisms of the faith that I also found lacking. Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the current RSSB guru. The theme of Anon's post echoes the changes in RSSB that I've written about in "Sant Mat, version 2.0," "Has Gurinder Singh revised Sant Mat to v. 3.0?," and "Gurinder Singh completely upends Sant Mat dogma." When I was a member of RSSB, it…
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