Letting go of spiritual books makes me feel lighter

I lost quite a bit of weight today. Both mental and physical.  The poundage was in the form of books I culled from the shelves that hold most of my spiritual, philosophical, scientific, and religious titles. I ended up with three boxes of books that will be donated to the Salem Library Foundation, which holds an annual used book sale.  This wasn't something I'd planned to do today. The urge just became overwhelming after I put a few books back on the shelves and idly looked at their neighbors. "Why am I keeping this book?," I thought. "I don't believe…

Religions’ search for security is self-defeating

My last post was about an over-zealous "security" volunteer at a meeting of a religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas.  Coming across some quotes today from Alan Watts' marvelous book, "The Wisdom of Insecurity," in another excellent book -- "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" -- made me realize that the problem with the irritating security volunteer was his attachment to a religious teaching which promises security in the form of god-realization, salvation, eternal life in a heavenly realm. Security. This really isn't the solution to our problems, but the problem itself. Watts cogently points out…

“When Death Comes” and “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

I've encountered Mary Oliver poems now and then throughout the years. Now I've bought several books that are collections of her creations.  Most days I read a couple of poems before I meditate. I'm not much of a poetry admirer, but Oliver speaks to me with her love of nature, honesty, and general sense of spiritual-but-not-religious.  Here's two poems that I particularly like in her "New and Selected Poems, Volume 1." When Death ComesWhen death comeslike the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purseto buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death…

The supreme fiction of Wallace Stevens

Following up on my previous post about John Gray's "The Silence of Animals," here's some passages from another part of the book that I liked a lot, a section called The Supreme Fiction.  This is pretty much how I've come to look upon spirituality: believing in a fiction that we know to be such. Not true, but attractive.  When I read a well-written fictional book, I can get so absorbed in the tale that I forget this is just a story. Likewise with an engrossing movie. What makes such books and movies so enjoyable is their capacity to transport me…

John Gray’s “The Silence of Animals” rejects humanism as a myth

This book, "The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Myths," is as wonderfully strange as its title. It was fitting that I was led to buy it in a strange way. After reading a highly critical review of it by Thomas Nagel in the New York Times. Nagel started off his review in this fashion: John Gray’s “Silence of Animals” is an attack on humanism. He condemns this widely accepted secular faith as a form of delusional self-flattery. “In the most general terms,” he tells us, “humanism is the idea that the human animal is the site of some…

Eben Alexander’s “proof of heaven” has been disproved

Well, it turns out that my skepticism about Eben Alexander's so-called "proof of heaven" (title of the book he wrote) was well-founded.  An investigation by Esquire magazine found all kinds of problems with Alexander's tale, including his credibility. The resulting article, The Prophet, costs $1.99 to read if you're not an Esquire subscriber.  I paid up. After reading the well-written piece, I feel like I got my money's worth. The four "don't believe him!" posts I've written about Alexander, here, here, here, and here, now are shown to have been valid, while Alexander's claims are either deusional or worse --…

White’s “The Science Delusion” is deluded about science

I admit it. I haven't read Curtis White's "The Science Delusion." But I've read reviews of the book. I considered buying it to see what a skeptic about science has to say. However, White seems so off-base in his claim that science is determined to supplant the humanities as well as religion, I figured it would be a waste of money. Slate has a fairly favorable review. Some comments on the review make a lot more sense to me, though. No scientist is saying that physics or chemistry or biology can explain a Dylan song or Dickinson poem. But science…

If God doesn’t exist, do we still need to believe in “God”?

I love to get free books. One of the benefits of being an active churchless blogger is getting review copies of books in the "spiritual but not religious" genre.  I'm about a third of the way through Galen Guengerich's "God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age." I like the title, and I''m liking the book -- though this isn't really a review, since I've still got most of the book to read. Today I reached one of Galen Guengerich's core theses in the "What's Divine" chapter (he's the senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan).  A central…

Early editions of Radha Soami Satsang Beas books wanted

A while back I blogged about how I boxed up almost all of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) books that I'd accumulated over some thirty-five years.  An Indian woman had contacted me, saying she was looking for older editions (first and second editions, ideally) of RSSB books published before 2000. I agreed to send her mine for the cost of mailing. They were sent to her relatives in this country, because shipping books to India is expensive. Only one of the three boxes I sent off got to her. Two were lost, one seemingly because it was opened by…

New book by Dennett looks like an anti-religion winner

Fortunately, our house has a strong foundation. Even though my wife thinks I'm in danger of collapsing our home via the weight of all the books I bring into it, I'm confident that it will survive even after Daniel Dennett's new 512 page tome is delivered. I ordered "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking" after learning about the book in a NY TImes story, Philosophy That Stirs the Waters. These days, Mr. Dennett, 71, is most famous for his blunt-talking atheist activism. “There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” he said flatly. But…

Weirdness: editing a book I wrote that I no longer agree with

This afternoon I decided that I've got to get serious about finishing my re-write of "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder," a book I wrote in the early 1990's that has been out of print for a long time — since the publisher went out of business.

Years ago I edited the book significantly. My preachiness bothered me. Of course, at the time I wrote it, what I said didn't sound preachy to me. Hey, it was the truth!

So this evening I spent 90 minutes or so on proofreading and editing instead of on writing my usual Church of the Churchless blog post. It was a pleasingly weird experience. Whenever I read what I wrote in this book, even de-preachy'fied, I'm struck by how differently I look upon life now.

Which is a good thing. I feel like I've evolved into a more genuine way of understanding my place in the cosmos. Still…

There are moments when I read what my true-believing self wrote and think, "Ah, back then it was sort of nice to be so sure about God, soul, spirit, life after death, and all that stuff."

Why, you might wonder, would I want to re-publish a book that I don't really believe in any more? Well, several reasons.

Some other people will find my arguments more convincing that I find them myself nowadays. In fact, there's a chance I was on the right track before, and the wrong track now. I put a lot of work into researching and writing this study of how "ageless mysticism" relates to the "new physics." And I wouldn't mind getting some royalties from Amazon to support my senior citizen longboarding passion and caffeine addiction. 

Until I get the revised version of God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder back in print (both paper and electronic forms), I'll probably spend less time writing original posts for this blog. Maybe I'll continue to share excerpts from the rewritten book.

Feel free to laugh at me. I do so myself. Here's how the introduction reads now. Can't recall how different it is from the original. Perhaps not much. I made more changes to other chapters.

Alan Watts in a nutshell: each present moment is eternity

Man, I dig Alan Watts. I just finished re-reading my favorite Watts book, "The Wisdom of Insecurity." He wrote it at a time, 1951, when "dig" was becoming part of the lexicon of the Beat Generation. But Watts' cogent understanding of what genuine spirituality -- for lack of a better term -- is all about: timeless. And so simple. Here's how the basic message of the book, as summarized in the final chapter, Religion Reviewed, flows. Watts' quotations are indented. My words precede the quotes. We long for security. For absoluteness. For something unchanging. But reality isn't like that. Living…

Spirituality without neuroscience is bullshit

For most of my life I've been an avid reader of philosophical, spiritual, mystical, religious, and otherwise what's it all about? books.  I've mentally devoured ideas that were way out there. Well, usually they also were way in here. Meaning, those notions concerned our innermost core being: soul, pure consciousness, Buddha-nature, atman... that thingless thing goes by lots of names. My evolution into churchlessness has changed my appetite for books that I once found delicously tasty. I'm much more attracted now to readings which accept reality as known to modern science, while delving further into the many mysteries lying beyond the…

Experience is all we are — no “experiencer” inside our head

Showing my age, I'm digging a re-reading of Alan Watts' "The Wisdom of Insecurity." I'm on a blogging triple-play with the book, previous posts being here and here. What Watts did masterfully, way back in 1951, was bring a sort of core spirituality down to earth, shorn of superfluous lofty religious, mystical, and supernatural abstractions. It's a purified philosophy of living -- ageless wisdom trimmed of dogmatic theologies. So simple. So, so simple. What we're looking for has always been right before our eyes. Also, our nose, mouth, ears, hands, and every other part of us.  Here's how I'd encapsulate…

I love Alan Watts’ “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” Here’s my love notes.

Some books I read once, and never look at again. Others become frequent companions, picked up whenever I need a, well, pick-me-up (non-liquid variety).  Alan Watts' wonderful "The Wisdom of Insecurity" is one of those books. It's my favorite Watts writing. Every time I read it, the book speaks something fresh to me. Not because the words between the covers have changed. Because I have.  Which is the central message of the book. Life is nothing but change. Scary! We don't know what's going to happen! Things could spiral out of control! Death... disease... disability... despair. And that's just some of…

Give up religious certainty. Embrace antifragile chaos.

Antifragile. It's my new favorite word. It's the title of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's latest book. I'm only a few chapters into it, but already love the notion that what sustains nature, life, economies, just about everything, isn't rigid robustness. Stresses that leave us the same aren't growthful. What we want is to be able to thrive on unpredictability, not-knowing, random stresses. Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind... The mission is how to domesticate, even dominate,…

Why I like D.T. Suzuki’s brand of Zen

For me, minimally Buddhist'y Zen is one of my foraging spots when I feel the need to feast on some "spiritual but not religious" food.  Seven years ago I bought "The Zen Koan as a means of Attaining Enlightenment," by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, a.k.a. D.T. Suzuki. (Check here for a recent update on my enlightenment; in brief, it's going great.) Many books come and go in my meditation area. A few are permanent residents. D.T. Suzuki's is one of them. Parts of it are so steeped in Zen lore/tradition, I don't resonate with them. But otherwise I can usually turn…

Sam Harris’ recommended reading: good list of books

Amazon is happy. So is VISA. Having recently subscribed to Sam Harris' email list, today I got a message plugging his recommended reading list -- which includes suggestions from readers of his books. Harris often is billed as a "new atheist." However, I see him more as a "spiritual but not religious" sort of guy, where spiritual doesn't mean anything supernatural. More like mindfulness, or making best use of human potential. Along that line, I just ordered a few books in his Eastern Philosophy and Meditation category that appealed to me: "Mindfulness in Plain English" and "Introduction to Emptiness."  Have a…

Certainty is how the brain’s left hemisphere deludes itself

Are you certain? For sure? No doubts at all? 100%? Your faith in what you know is absolute? Congratulations. The left hemisphere of your brain is firmly in control of you -- recognizing that almost certainly (notice that almost? my brain's right hemisphere is working) there's no difference between "you" and "your brain." This is my second post about Iain McGilchrist's fascinating book, "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World." See here for the first. I'm hugely enjoying learning about how the left and right hemispheres function.  After all, how the world appears…