Posted inBooks Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

A religious or spiritual path is a metaphor — not reality

Metaphors are fun to play around with. Over on my other blog, I recently called the Oregon city where I live "a blandburger sandwiched between spicy Portland and Eugene." But Salem isn't really food. It's what it is: people, places, buildings, roads, parks, culture (and the lack thereof), plus so much else immediately cognizable stuff. Metaphors are a big step removed from the sort of reality that doesn't depend upon mentally connecting this, such as Salem, with that, such as the innards of a sandwich. I'm plugging away on reading a big thick book, "Philosophy in the Flesh," that I've…
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Posted inReality Science

Reality isn’t what we imagine, or remember

Most forms of religion, mysticism, spirituality, and philosophizing have a big drawback: they're wildly out of touch with reality. Of course, for those who don't care about living a truthful life, imagining an illusory world where Jesus saves, a guru enlightens, karma bites you in the butt during your next incarnation, or whatever, can be appealing -- since a believer can substitute warm and fuzzy concepts for whatever hard realities he or she wishes to deny. Those of us who are committed to experiencing life as honestly as possible have our own sources of solace, though. Since I'm a long-time…
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Posted inReality

Reality is what works for us

What is real? This is one of the toughest questions. Ordinarily we don't pay much attention to it. We just go on with our lives. But sometimes it's necessary to ponder whether something is really there -- a human-like shadowy shape moving in the woods as we take an evening walk, say (if a serial killer is on the loose, we'll be seriously motivated to ponder that question). Philosophers are interested in this issue for other less concrete reasons. They wonder about topics such as "Realism and Truth," the title of a chapter in Philosophy in the Flesh, a thick…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Get real: give up religious and mystical concepts

Religious believers who make a pilgrimage to this blog often amuse me. They'll say, "Brian, you live in your head; you need to give up your concepts about reality and embrace God's truth." Ha ha ha. What a joke. These guys and gals are deluded. They've got things completely backward. I just rode my Burgman 650 maxi-scooter to a coffeehouse in downtown Salem. It's 45 degrees here in Oregon. I was cold, but comfortably not freezing, thanks to warm gloves/gear and a large cozy windscreen. I didn't think about anything supernatural once on my 25 minute drive. Here and now…
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Posted inReality

Live like this is your last moment (because it is)

Most of my life I've been searching for What Life is All About. A poem I wrote when I was thirteen is my earliest recorded pondering about the cosmos, but I'm sure my pre-teen mind also was looking for answer's to life's big questions. Having come to an age when my first Social Security payment is due to be deposited in our checking account this month, I can report that some fifty years of philosophical, religious, mystical, scientific, and spiritual inquiring has led me to a simple three word conclusion: This is it. You're free to disagree. I can understand…
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Posted inReality Science

Unconscious zombies and conscious thermostats

Comments on my previous post about David Chalmers' consciousness theories got me doing more pondering about zombies -- the philosophical variety. Personally, I resonate with Chalmers' notion that it is logically possible to conceive of beings who are identical to us down to the most minute subatomic particle, and behave exactly like us in even the most subtle fashion. The only difference betweeen zombie and human would be this: humans experience what it is like to be what we are; zombies don't. Admittedly this is a strange notion to wrap our minds around. For each of us, our entire life…
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Posted inReality Science

David Chalmer’s view of consciousness: naturalistic dualism

Consciousness. It's what we are and know, since reality doesn't exist for us if we can't experience it. Yet it's also the most mysterious thing in the cosmos. So mysterious, it can't really be called a "thing." Consciousness is utterly subjective. But without consciousness we wouldn't be aware of objective reality. So go figure... David Chalmers has done a lot of figuring on this subject. He's an Australian philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of mind/consciousness. I've had his book, "The Conscious Mind," sitting unread on my bookshelf for over a decade. A few days ago I picked it up,…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Enlightenment made simple: it’s reality

Back in my true-believing religious days I looked upon enlightenment as something special, difficult to achieve, and rare. Now, I see it pretty much opposite: not unique, easy to attain, and commonplace. When you read descriptions of enlightenment in the world's spiritual, mystical, and philosophical literature -- and I've read lots of them -- some commonalities start to become apparent beneath all of the bewildering idiosyncratic descriptions. The basic one is this: loss or lessening of self-hood, egotism, sense of separateness. Supposedly enlightened people, such as the Buddha, talk about how "I-ness" isn't truly real. We humans aren't ego-encapsulated entities…
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Posted inReality

Instant enlightenment. Guaranteed. Just read this.

Before I proceed to enlighten you through a few well-chosen paragraphs, side-stepping all those ridiculous disciplines, such as meditation, that usually are regarded as necessary to achieve this elevated understanding, my inner attorney demands that I add some metaphorical fine print to the title of this blog post: First, you should indeed soon be enlightened as to the ultimate nature of the cosmos. However, don't expect that this will be, well, what you expect. Second, my guarantee is related to my just-mentioned "first." Have no doubt that my words will take you to the furthest reaches of reality. But if…
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Posted inMorality Reality

People aren’t free to believe

Here in the United States, you often hear "It's a free country, so...[I can do such and such.]" Reflecting this attitude, I frequently say on this blog that people are free to believe whatever they want to, so long as they don't try to force those beliefs on others. But Sam Harris has caused me to see the caveats in this. In his new book, The Moral Landscape, a section in the "Belief" chapter is called Do We Have Freedom of Belief? Short answer: No. If you ask me to raise a hand, I can choose either my right or…
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Posted inBuddhism Reality Science

Relationship is the essential nature of reality

Some people are attracted to an "Eastern" holistic outlook on life. Others, to a "Western" analytical viewpoint. I've always thought that these were just two different ways of looking at reality, with each having its strengths and weaknesses. But some passages in Winifred Gallagher's Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life present another possibility. She describes research by psychologist Richard Nisbett about how Americans and Japanese describe an underwater scene quite differently. Americans focus on the largest and most colorful fish, while the Japanese would say things such as "It looked like a stream. The water was green. There were rocks…
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Posted inGod Reality Wu Project

“God” is the absence of “me”

I don't believe in God, not as this word is commonly understood. I don't see any sign of a personal divinity who created and oversees the universe, nor any indication of an omniscient and omnipresent universal consciousness. Here's the newest news about proof of God's existence: there isn't any. Isn't it more than a little strange that precisely zero progress has been made in the thousands of years of recorded human history toward conclusively resolving The Big Question: "Is there a God?" Yet I'm akin to Mike, a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, who has commented, "I'm a diehard…
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Posted inReality Science

Science shows how humans create reality

It's a New Age cliche: "we create our own reality." Almost always people who claim this are talking non-sensical gibberish. If this were true, there'd be a racing green Mini-Cooper S in my driveway instead of a silver Prius (see here and here for my long-running attempts to manifest a more exciting ride). However, there is much more than a grain of scientific truth in those words, when understood correctly. As noted in my previous post about quantum theory, in the realm of the very small how an observation is made determines what is observed. In accord with wave-particle duality,…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Keep open a crack in your belief system

Ah, it feels so good to let in the light, to freshen the atmosphere, to relieve the pressure of a claustrophobic enclosure. Not anywhere outside -- within our psyche. All we need to do is keep open a crack in our meaning-of-life belief system, that conglomeration of thoughts, feelings, intuitions, knowings, and what-not which enable us to get out of bed in the morning, move through life with a sense of purpose, and offer us some answers to what's it all about? Nothing is 100% certain. Including what I just said. Hey, there might well be something that is 100%…
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Posted inReality

Ultimate truth is a fool’s goal

Back when I was giving supposedly inspiring talks back in my true believing days, I used the term "ultimate reality" a lot. It just sounded so, well, ultimate. And real. I enjoyed thinking that one day it'd be possible to know the final truth of the cosmos, what the whole amazing deal is all about, the answer to all possible questions. In short, the Aha! understanding that would demolish the noncomprehending Church of Holy Fuck! It now seems to me that ultimate truth is a fool's goal. And I readily admit that, in retrospect (the best perspective to view one's…
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Posted inReality Religions

Here’s the reason religions don’t agree

I used to be a proponent of the "perennial philosophy." This is the notion that there's a basic agreement about the nature of metaphysical reality. Aldous Huxley wrote a book by the same name, saying the perennial philosophy is: The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the…
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Posted inReality

A mountain is what it is. Just like life.

The trajectory of my once-spiritual life has been heading away from other worldliness for quite a few years now. If there's one thing I've come to know about religiosity, it's that there's almost certainly nothing to know. I don't believe in a Cosmic Jokester. But I'm a lot more inclined to worship this non-existent being than an imaginary God. After all, think how much power the Cosmic Jokester has (assuming she exists, which she almost certainly doesn't). This prankster is able to make billions of people believe there is more to life than what is apparent here and now on…
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Posted inReality Science

Nothing wrong with being a churchless “possibilian”

Some time ago I came across the "Killing the Buddha" web site and blog. Naturally I liked the name of the place. And I copied some links to pages that appealed to me at the time.Such as, "Ways I Have Been a Bad Meditator." And, "The False Science" (concerning a book that I blogged about myself).Today I revisited Killing the Buddha and saw that "The Struggle for the (Possible) Soul of David Eagleman," by Robert Jensen, was featured. Interesting article. It starts off:There’s a struggle inside the brain of David Eagleman for the soul of David Eagleman.That is, there might…
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Posted inReality Science

John Burroughs’ appealing scientific pantheism

Whenever I take one of those quizzes that tell you what religion/ philosophy melds best with your beliefs, pantheism always ends up close to the top. That makes sense. I've got a naturalistic view of the universe, but I also have a powerful sense of awe when I contemplate the cosmos -- either in its incomprehensibly vast totality, or the mystery of how a single flower has come to be.Today I came across a mention of John Burroughs in "The Quotable Atheist," a book I pick up regularly for some churchless inspiration. The Burroughs quotes I liked the most were…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Be as little as you can be…and real

"Be All You Can Be" was a longstanding slogan of the United States Army. I like it, though the big question is what that all consists of. (In part, clearly, a soldier.) Compared to the cosmos, "not much."I used to be pretty darn grandiose in my spiritual goals. The organization I was a member of, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, taught that it was possible -- indeed, imperative -- to experience God as a living inner presence.At the core of the RSSB philosophy is a belief that there is a spiritual purpose to human life – to experience the divinity of…
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