Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Here’s what I said to someone with doubts about Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Recently I got an email from someone who is an initiate of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization based in India that has centers around the world. This person said that they've been having doubts about RSSB and don't feel connected to the RSSB guru.  Not being able to express their doubts with other initiates, I was asked to provide some feedback to what the person had to say. Below is my response. My mention of Sufism relates to the person saying that they had a Sufi background. Nice to hear from…
72
Posted inConsciousness Personal/Stories

Anesthesia with propofol raises interesting consciousness questions

Because I'm prone to getting non-cancerous polyps, which could turn into cancer if not removed, I've had colonoscopies every five years or so since I was around fifty. The most recent ones have involved anesthesia with propofol, a frequently-used drug with few side effects but potential for abuse. Because it induces euphoria in many people. One study found about half.  In 2011 I wrote "Finding enlightenment through a colonoscopy (and propofol)." After talking about a disturbing conversation I had with a nurse about whether propofol truly prevents a patient from feeling discomfort/pain, or merely takes away the memory of discomfort/pain,…
1
Posted inPolitics

Religious bigotry behind hatred of transgender people

There are lots of reasons why I reject religion. One big one is that religious people, especially fundamentalists, often are extremely narrow-minded and judgmental when it comes to sexual matters. Here in the United States, opposition to transgender individuals is a disgusting hallmark of the Republican Party -- which includes evangelicals and other religious zealots who love to hate those who don't conform to their theological beliefs about gender. It's a plain fact that some people with a male or female body don't view themselves as being the sex they were assigned at birth. A CNN story, "GOP lawmakers escalate…
19
Posted inMindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

If our attention wanders, the question is where it should rest

Most of us are afflicted more often than we'd like with what often is called "monkey mind." Meaning, our attention is prone to flitting around from this to that to whatever, sort of like monkeys swinging from branch to branch in a seemingly aimless fashion. But why is monkey mind a bad thing? Monkeys seem to have a good time in trees. Why are we humans so concerned about controlling our attention? That's one of the themes in an article by Casey Cep in the January 30, 2023 issue of The New Yorker, Eat, Pray, Concentrate. The online version is…
22
Posted inAtheism Buddhism Personal/Stories

I might have had a mini-enlightenment last night

Even though I no longer believe in God, I'm attracted to non-religious Buddhism. So even though I don't engage in any sort of formal Buddhist practice, I like the idea of being enlightened.  Just seems better than being endarkened.  Though I can't say with any certainty that the intuitive flash that coursed through my consciousness as I was heading to bed last night was a sign of a mini-enlightenment (I'm way too humble to claim a maxi-enlightenment), I like the idea that it was. So I'll go with that. I was heading down the stairs that lead to the bedroom…
9
Posted inReality

We are the only animal that can deny our animal nature

In some regards we humans have capabilities beyond those of other species with whom we share our planet. But in this regard we are inferior to those creatures: we are the only animal that can deny our animal nature. Not everybody does this, of course. I'm proudly animal, as is Maxim Loskutoff, who wrote "The Beast in Me" in The New York Times collection of philosophical essays published in the newspaper, Question Everything. As you can read below, Loskutoff vividly recognized his animalness when a grizzly bear stalked him and his partner during their hike in Glacier National Park. But…
28
Posted inComments Mystics

Mystical experiences need testing if they become a worldview

As I've noted before, and surely will do so again, one of the pleasures I get from this blog is reading intelligent comment conversations on posts that I've written. Or in this case, on an Open Thread where the comments are the substance of the post.  Below is a comment that Appreciative Reader left on an Open Thread in response to a comment by manjit. If you want to read manjit's comment, click on that link and scroll up to the preceding comment. Appreciative Reader has a knack for saying things in a way that I've never come across before.…
6
Posted inBooks India

Purity vs. pollution is a bizarre aspect of caste

Since I'm reading, and enjoying, Isabel Wilkerson's great book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, I was especially interested to read a recent newspaper story about Seattle becoming the first city in the United States to ban caste discrimination. Caste, in Wilkerson's view, is at the heart of American racism, Nazi Germany's horrors against Jews, and naturally India's longstanding caste divisions. I noted in a previous post how Wilkerson discovered that even currently among Indian scholars studying caste, she was able to tell who was upper caste and who was lower caste by the way they carried themselves and how…
1
Posted inMindfulness

Mindfulness helps bring body and mind into the same place

Inspiration can be found anywhere. When I started to read the current issue of TIME magazine, I was pleasantly surprised to turn a page and find "5 ways to be mindful without meditating." (The online version of the story has 8 ways.) I liked what Angela Haupt had to say about how our body can be in one place while our mind is in a far distant place -- often not just geographically, but also in time, since almost everybody is prone to thoughts of the past and future even as our body is firmly in the present. After reading…
8
Posted inBuddhism Vedanta/Advaita

Why I prefer Buddhism to Advaita Vedanta

On Sam Harris' Waking Up app, I noticed there was a lengthy (1 hr 37 m) discussion between Harris and Swami Sarvapriyananda, a Hindu monk and Minister of the Vedanta Society of New York. So for the past few days I'd listen to 10-15 minutes or so of the discussion every morning. Today I finished listening to the whole exchange as I was driving around in my car. It was really interesting. Both Harris and Sarvapriyananda are highly knowledgeable about both Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Of course, Harris embraces Buddhism and Sarvapriyananda Vedanta, so each of them is more expert…
12
Posted inAlan Watts Books

The profundity of “There are no black people in Africa”

As Alan Watts was fond of saying, echoing a basic tenet of Taoism, you can't have good without bad, virtue without vice, up without down -- or indeed any quality without its opposite.  Everything becomes what it is in relation to something that it isn't.  If everybody in the world had always believed in God, there would be no religious people. There would just be people. Ditto if everybody had always lived without any conception of God. Then there would be no atheists, just people. Before sentient creatures who can conceive of abstractions arrived on our planet, the natural world…
2
Posted inBooks India

Caste is a powerful way of looking at prejudice in both India and America

Recently TIME magazine had a cover story about what's wrong with the United States (a big subject!) that featured a lengthy essay by Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize winning Black author and university instructor. I was blown away by her emphasis on caste being at the core of our nation's social problems, rather than the more familiar racism. Wilkerson talked about her 2020 book, "Caste: The Origin of our Discontents," which focuses on caste in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany. Somehow I hadn't heard about that book until now. But I made up for that oversight by immediately…
2
Posted inMystics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Why a guru shouldn’t be worshipped

Recently someone sent me a link to "The Guru Has No Turban" by Greg Leveille. It's well worth reading if you've ever believed that a guru should be worshipped as a divine being. Or worshipped for any other reason, like their supposed perfection. The article is centered on the Sant Mat teachings that I followed for thirty-five years. Leveille appears to believe in a basic truth of those teachings -- that it is possible to know a formless Celestial Awareness -- but rejects the Sant Mat notion that the guru is greater than God, because God isn't available to help…
33
Posted inCoronavirus Personal/Stories

After I got Covid, science became my best friend

About two weeks ago, on Monday, January 30, I tested positive for Covid. A few days later I blogged about this on my HinesSight blog in I test positive for Covid. And feel positive about Paxlovid. Well, it was a good run without ever getting Covid -- about three years since the nasty virus came to the United States in early 2020.  After I had trouble sleeping last Saturday night, feeling on edge for no discernible reason, I took a rapid Covid test Sunday morning, which came back negative, even though my voice was a bit hoarse. But Monday morning…
20
Posted inMeaning of life

We make our own purpose, not God, not the universe

Without a purpose, life is barely worth living. That's one sign of depression: when nothing seems to matter and our existence seems meaningless. But where does purpose come from? Religious people typically say "God." They believe that God has a plan for us and we just need to let it unfold, trusting in the Almighty. People who strongly embrace a particular culture or nationality may feel that their purpose is to live in accord with the tenets of their society. And as Joseph Carter says in an essay I read today in Question Everything: Essays from the New York Times…
6
Posted inNeuroscience

Gut-directed hypnotherapy: example of the mind-body connection

In one way, the whole idea of the mind-body connection doesn't make sense. After all, it isn't as if the mind is one thing and the body is a different thing. The mind basically is the brain in action. The brain is part of the body. So obviously there's a connection between the mind and body, since they're different aspects of the same entity.  But most people, me included, do view the mind as something more ethereal than the cruder body. Our thoughts and emotions seem to be distinct from the flesh, blood, and bone of the body. Even though…
8
Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

I’m told that the RSSB guru said I’m good, or am a good soul

Today I got this message from someone who, unlike me, still attends the satsang meetings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the India-based religious organization that I belonged to for 35 years, before RSSB and me parted our ways. Baba Ji refers to the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. I heard today from someone who said “Baba Ji said that Brian Hines is good (or a good soul).” I am not sure which or maybe both, because his English is a little hard for me to understand. I told this person, Ah. That's nice. I said that because it was…
16
Posted inReality Wu Project

Beyond awe, beyond mystery, there’s ultimate not-knowing

There's many levels lying on the other side of ordinary knowing. I've been pondering this after writing the recent post, What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine? I hasten to point out that while I'd love to lay claim to such a marvelous title, it belongs to David Wolpert, who wrote an engrossing monograph about the limits of not only human knowledge, but the knowledge of any other species. Wolpert lays out the foundation of his complex and subtle arguments in a single paragraph. This question does not concern limitations on what we can know about…
16
Posted inReality Science

What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?

I love the question that's the title of this blog post. The question didn't come from me, but from David Wolpert. I learned about a paper he wrote when it was mentioned in a recent issue of New Scientist. But there is a deeper question here: can we be sure that logic, even a reformed kind, is enough to understand the universe in all its fullness? It is a question that David Wolpert at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico has been thinking about for decades. In a recent monograph, he spelled out his argument that it is more…
13
Posted inConsciousness

Experience is part of physical reality

Sometimes -- well, actually, quite a lot of times -- I find people arguing on this blog, and in other places, that science doesn't know how to deal with personal experience. Further, that because experience seems to be something ineffable, as is consciousness (likely there's no difference between experience and consciousness), this means that the most intimate part of our being is outside the domain of science, which deals with physical reality. Galen Strawson, a philosopher, disagrees. I wrote about his take on consciousness in "The hard problem isn't the nature of consciousness, but of matter."  Many make the same…
46