Posted inReality

Buddhists are wrong about impermanence. One thing is permanent: existence.

As evidenced by my previous post, Buddhists talk a lot about impermanence. So far as I can tell, in Buddhism nothing is considered to be permanent. Everything arises from causes and conditions. Everything lacks inherent existence, which means existing as and for itself. That's the nature of emptiness, basically, interdependence. Even emptiness is empty of inherent existence. Yet... My experience tells me that even though impermanence rules the roost of existence, there's one thing that is permanent -- the roost itself, existence. This is one of my favorite subjects, closely related to, if not identical with, the classic question, Why…
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Posted inConsciousness Reality

We are all aliens to each other, since we view the world from different perspectives

In particle physicist Daniel Whiteson’s book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, he speaks about how if alien beings came to Earth and we tried to communicate with them, almost certainly this would be very difficult, given how differently they likely would perceive reality. And without common perceptions, understanding is hard to come by. Assuming, as we progress along our Drake equation, that visiting aliens are mathematical, scientific, and communicative, the next hurdle to a full scientific mind meld is whether we are looking at the same Universe. If aliens have different senses, they will perceive different bits of the Universe --…
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Posted inReality Science

“Do Aliens Speak Physics?” speaks to the nature of science and human assumptions

If you want a synopsis of particle physicist Daniel Whiteson's book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, an article by Whiteson in the March 14, 2026 issue of New Scientist provides an overview of his provocative question. Here's a PDF of the article. It starts out this way: Would aliens do physics, or is science a human invention? | New Scientist Modern physics offers a remarkable lens on reality. In just over a century, it has decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe and produced laws that seem to hold everywhere, from Earth’s crust to distant galaxies. It is…
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Posted inMeaning of life Reality

“Good enough” can be a wiser choice than “absolute best”

When is good enough, well, good enough? As compared to the absolute best. Quite often. If not usually. Because holding out for the absolute best brings with it some definite problems. Such as, all the effort it takes to evaluate the merits of every possible option available to us. And the difficulty of arriving at criteria that would allow us to decide which of those options is #1, the best choice of all. Today The Atlantic, which I subscribe to online, had an interesting article, The Secret to Success is 'Monotasking,'  In other words, focusing on one thing at a…
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Posted inBuddhism Free will Reality

“Each moment is the universe” — a great way of viewing time

For much of my life I've been consumed by a sense that I needed to use my time carefully. Partly this arose from a 35 year dedication to an Eastern philosophy that taught the purposes of human life were, first, self-realization, which led to the ultimate purpose, god-realization. Meaning, after realizing ourself as immaterial soul, we then could make a supernatural journey to eternal existence with God. Whew! I feel kind of exhausted just describing what used to be how I viewed the purpose of my life. Serious stuff. The course of my life after death depended on how well…
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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 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 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 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 inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Why believe a guru can do supernatural bad if the guru can’t do supernatural good?

We humans aren't purely rational beings. Sure, we have our moments of rationality. We also have our moments of irrationality. Both are part of being human. Emotions are a large part of our humanity, but in no way are love, hate, anger, sorrow, and such rational. Nor would we want them to be. Still.... Sometimes it amazes me when a person makes what seems to be a blatant failure of reason, or critical thinking. Understand: I've been that person myself, so I have direct experience of this. I also have indirect experience. Here's a recent example. During the 21 years…
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Posted inMindfulness Reality

Not-knowing is wise, because we know so much less than we think we know

Way back when, Garrison Keillor said about his fictional locale, Lake Woebegone, "all the children are above average." This reflects the neuroscientific fact that most people consider themselves to be better drivers than average, more loving and compassionate than average, and in general, above average in lots of areas. Which is mathematically impossible, of course. For every person above average, there has to be another person below average. This seems to also apply to the general notion of how much we know. Most of us, me certainly included, like to believe that we know a great deal about many things.…
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Posted inReality Science

Cause and effect may actually rule in the quantum realm, according to a fresh theoretical approach

There's something about a provocative unproven theory in physics that appeals to me much more than a provocative unproven theory in religion, mysticism, and spirituality in general. Probably it's because physicists approach a deeper understanding of reality from a solid factual foundation, while that isn't the case with religion, mysticism, and spirituality in general -- unless the new idea there is completely based on natural, rather than supernatural, notions. So when the November 29-December 5 issue of New Scientist appeared in my mailbox with the cover blaring The Quantum Leap -- A surprising twist on cause and effect reveals how…
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Posted inGod Reality Science

I critique how my 50 year old self thought about God from my 77 year old perspective

Recently I wrote, Here I am, once again plugging my "Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing" essay. I noted that since I wrote that essay around 1998, when I was still a believer of the Eastern religion variety, my views have changed a lot since then. Now I'm an atheist, so, yeah, that's a big change from believing in the possibility of knowing God. The past few days I've been reading the 24-page essay, as it had been a long time since I'd done this. Today I finished reading it, so figured this was a good time to critique…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Maybe we humans are smart enough to ask ultimate questions, but not smart enough to answer them

Peter Zapffe was called "the bleakest philosopher of all time" in a Reddit post dealing with existentialism. That didn't make me eager to learn more about him. But I still wanted to, having come across several mentions of Zapffe in Robert Saltzman's book, Depending on no-thing. That title may sound depressing as well, but actually I feel energized when I read Saltzman's writings. While he rejects philosophical, metaphysical, and religious attempts to make life seem more appealing that it actually is, Saltzman's emphasis on direct experience of here and now is wonderfully simple. It's difficult, if not impossible, to question…
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Posted inAtheism Reality Science

Why keeping an open mind on the divine is a stupid idea

Sometimes intelligent people can say some really stupid things. I know this as an experiential fact, because I'm intelligent and I've said some really stupid things. In conversations. In books I've written. In my blog posts. When I do this, it's entirely fair for other people to criticize what I've said. That's why I feel equally justified in calling an essay in the Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks, "Why You Should Keep an Open Mind on the Divine," a stupid idea. Brooks starts off by quoting Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the second man to orbit the Earth: “Sometimes people are…
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Posted inMindfulness Reality

What if this here and now is our true home?

You know what's really strange? That the title of this blog post sounds strange to so many people. I mean, all those people, who once included myself, who consider that this world we're living in here and now actually isn't where we are supposed to be. That Other Place, that Mystical Destination, that Promised Land -- religions and philosophies disagree about what it consists of, but for billions of humans it is a real thing, a goal to be pursued. So Christians yearn for heaven, or the Second Coming here on Earth. Hindus hope that their eternal soul, Atman, will…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Truth is so important, it must be defended with zeal (but not zealotry)

Today I had an interview with Ken Adams, the host of a show on KMUZ here in Salem, a community radio station. You can hear all about it in this link of the podcast, which appeared after the live broadcast was over. (Well, sort of live; Ken and I recorded it yesterday, because I don't function well at 8 am.) I'll also include the audio file directly, in case the link ever goes away. Our subject was the findings of an investigation into the misdeeds of the Salem Mayor, Julie Hoy. I filed a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics…
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