Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Shivinder Singh’s bail revoked to uncover conspiracy hatched by him

It's been quite a while since there's been any news about the financial scandal involving the Singh brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder), their relative Gurinder Singh Dhillon (guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas), Sunil Godhwani (who used to be the guru's close advisor), and others. But a few days ago this story appeared in The Economic Times. Similar stories ran in some other publications.  It's good to see that the Delhi High Court revoked the bail that allowed Shivinder Singh to stay out of detention, a goal being to uncover the conspiracy hatched by Shivinder and to trace the funds that were…
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Posted inGod

Sorry. No winner in “Tell me why you believe in God” contest.

Well, the first entries are in, and I'm not impressed.  Four days ago I invited visitors to this blog to leave a comment on my "Tell me why you believe in God" post.  I said: I'm defining "God" as a conscious supernatural being with miraculous powers. If you're a believer with a markedly different definition, include that definition in your comment. The responses were decidedly underwhelming. Some were interesting, but none were directly related to what I wanted. Why someone believes in God. This is surprising, since it sure seems like quite a few regular readers of this blog do believe…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Bruce Lee’s daughter writes about her father’s philosophy

A fellow Tai Chi student and friend mentioned "Be Water, My Friend" a while back. This is a book by Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter. I'm enjoying it.  My favorite Tai Chi form is called in English, Water Boxing. It's very long, difficult to learn, not known by very many, and involves a lot of subtleties.  I probably should call it a Tai Chi'ish form, because few of the hundreds of moves look like traditional Tai Chi. But that's the way of water. It can take on an infinity of forms, because water is fluid, flexible, formless. Which is the…
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Posted inGod

Tell me why you believe in God

I'm a curious guy. I enjoy learning how people view the Big Questions of Life, including one of the biggest, Does God exist? I used to answer "Yes." Now I'm an atheist who says, "Almost certainly, no." But I'm well aware that many of those who visit this blog and leave comments on the posts here are believers in God. So I'm inviting you to leave a comment on this post that explains why you believe that God exists. Or, if you have some doubts about this, why you're almost certain that God exists. I'm defining "God" as a conscious…
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Posted inBooks Science

Each of us isn’t a thing, but a web of connections

Before moving on to subjects other than quantum theory, which I've written about here and here recently, I want to talk in my own words regarding what I like about Carlo Rovelli's book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The previous posts consisted mostly of excerpts from the book. So here's my attempt to describe what appealed to me the most about Helgoland. (That's an island in the North Sea where Heisenberg came up with his key concepts about the quantum world.) Rovelli is an exceptionally clear writer. He also has a poetic sense that isn't unique among physicists, but…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I’m re-sharing my post about my sister’s memorial service

Back in 2010 I wrote a blog post soon after my sister died, "Memorial service shows sad side of religion."  I'm re-sharing that link for the reason I expressed on Facebook just now. Carol Ann, my sister, died in December 2009. For ten years before her death, starting in 2000, her only daughter (Cathy) refused to let Carol Ann or her husband, Bob, have any contact with their two grandchildren. This hurt Carol Ann and Bob immensely. It was a source of great pain for them.   A primary reason for this sad estrangement was the fundamentalist religion embraced by…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness Science

Mind and consciousness through the eye of quantum physics

Here's additional excerpts from physicist Carlo Rovelli's wonderful new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution." (See here for my first post about the book.) The passages below are from final chapters where Rovelli focuses on the nature of mind and consciousness in light of quantum physics.  Rovelli's take on this subject is very much in line with a post I wrote in 2018, "Awareness is a process, not a thing."  Consciousness isn't a thing. It is a process. Thinking of it as a thing makes us wonder what kind of a thing it is, whereas we should be…
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Posted inBooks Science

Relational view of quantum theory reeks of truth

If you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. Well, whether or not you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. At least a little bit. Because below I've shared an excerpt from physicist Carlo Rovelli's amazing new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The excerpt doesn't do justice to the entire book, but it will give you a feel for Rovelli's relational take on quantum physics -- which makes so much sense, it's hard to understand how anyone could disagree with it (though I'm sure many do). I'll have more to say about…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Reactivity amplifies our suffering in the moment

I'm an admirer of Jeff Warren's guided meditations on my iPhone's Calm app. Here's how a recent offering from Warren starts out. I liked it a lot. His tar metaphor is great. When I react to a problem in my life with a strong negative emotion, it does indeed feel like I'm covered in a black sticky substance that makes it difficult to see what's going on with any sort of clarity.  But notice that Warren says we shouldn't fight what's happening. Rather, we need to accept everything both inside and outside of us.  The less we fight, and simply…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Be born again through science

Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004, has written a compelling book about the universe: Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality. Here's a passage from his Afterword chapter that I like a lot. It is indeed strange that we make such a division between internal and external worlds, when in truth there is only one thing going on. The child of our introduction, now an adult, may come to understand the fundamental conclusions that science, following its radically conservative method, reaches about the physical world.  Then she is prepared to revisit the starting point of her adventure…
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Posted inReality

Radical embrace of reality

I like the sound of it: radical embrace of reality.  I'm not entirely sure what those words mean to me. They just popped into my head recently, and I've given them a home in my cranium until they decide to pop out and head somewhere else. As long as this notion is rumbling around in my mind, I figure I might as well try to describe why I find it so appealing.  Reality is a close relative of truth. I admire both -- reality and truth. When I used to give talks to fellow devotees of the Eastern form of…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Wear your identity lightly if you value truth

This morning I finished reading Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of three previous posts (here, here, and here). Her final chapters were great. Two had to do with how we sometimes hold on to beliefs so tightly, they become part of our identity. This is especially true of religious and political beliefs. Here's an excerpt  from the "How Beliefs Become Identities" chapter. The problem with our tendency to turn beliefs into identities isn't that it pits us against each other. At least, that's not the problem I'm concerned with here.…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Update your beliefs often as new information comes in

Every morning I read another chapter of Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of two previous posts (here and here). I really liked her "How to Be Wrong" chapter. Along with most people, I don't enjoy finding out I was wrong about something. But it's a heck of a lot better than continuing on in my wrongness, which keeps me from learning a more complete truth about that thing. Below you can read excerpts from that chapter. They're in three sections, dealing with changing your mind frequently, the ease of…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality Religions

You have options. In religions. In everything else.

I'm continuing to enjoy my reading of Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of my previous post.  Her core idea is that motivated reasoning, where we ignore what's true because our motivation is to preserve our current belief structure, leads to a soldier mindset aimed at defending our beliefs from that unwelcome intruder, reality.  By contrast, a scout mindset values truth-seeking through accuracy motivated reasoning. Our goal is know what is really there, not what we hope is there, what we'd like to be there, or what others want us…
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Posted inReality

Embrace the Scout mindset, not the Soldier mindset

My new favorite book -- the latest in a countless (almost) series of favorites -- is Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't. Galef's key concept is the distinction between a Solider and Scout mindset. This chart shows basic differences between them. In an initial chapter, Galef talks about motivated reasoning, the basis for a Soldier mindset. The tricky thing about motivated reasoning is that even though it's easy to spot in other people, it doesn't feel like motivated reasoning from the inside. When we reason, it feels like we're being objective. Fair-minded.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Regret is a form of mental time travel

Regret is one of the more interesting emotions. Assuming that is what it is, an emotion.  I find that regret isn't like happiness, sadness, anger, love, or any of the other emotions with an obvious feeling component.  Regret is more subtle. It's like a raw ingredient for other emotions such as sadness or anxiety. Cooked in a certain way, regret can turn into an unpleasant emotional stew, though by itself regret often is rather cerebral. The foundation of regret is feeling that I should have done something differently, even though at the time I did that thing, it seemed like…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Equanimity is like a 360 degree openness

Most mornings I listen to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my iPhone's Calm app. Fairly frequently Warren talks about equanimity. One way he describes equanimity is as a 360 degree openness.  I like that image. I picture myself sitting in a chair that rotates in a full circle so I can see everything through the panoramic window of my mind. The stuff I like. The stuff I don't like. Worries. Problems. Joys. Challenges. Pleasantness. Irritations. Whatever.  To alter the metaphor a bit, I picture my mind's panoramic 360 degree window as not being made of glass, but having…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 38 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.  If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread. As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Mother’s Day blog post points to fuzzy nature of “self”

Hey, I didn't set out to write a philosophical Mother's Day blog post, but what emerged has enough philosophy in it to justify sharing here. In "My mother lives on in the back of my books" I talk about how we don't really need to think or feel our way toward being close to our deceased parents, for they live on as us in large part.  This is possible because the boundaries of our "self" are decidedly fuzzy. There isn't a firm boundary between us and everyone else, since who we are depends on our genetic heritage and experiences, both…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Another guest churchless post from John

Here's another guest post that I fashioned out of an email from John, a guy I regularly communicate with. I always enjoy his thoughtful responses to stuff that I've written about. I believe TNH stands for Thich Nhat Hanh. Hey Brian, how are you and yours doing? Hopefully as well as you can be. As always, I’ve been enjoying your posts. Especially the two about what we can learn from the internal arts. It is funny when I tell people that tai chi has legitimate martial applications for self-defense. They look at me like, right…. Like you, I trained in…
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