Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Two good New Scientist letters about our inner voice

Last month I blogged about an article in New Scientist regarding inner speeech, inner dialogue, the voices inside our heads, or whatever you want to call it. In the June 22 issue there were two interesting letters about this article. Here's the first one: From Brian Reffin SmithYour article on inner voices was fascinating (1 June, p. 32). I often solve problems or rehearse a text, such as a lecture, in my head. Saying it out loud destroys the moment, with just fragments remaining from some beautiful yet fragile structure. It seems, in that moment, so simple to see the…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

We can feel soulful…without a soul

I enjoy feeling spiritual. But I don't believe in spirit any more. I know what it's like to be soulful. But I don't believe in soul any more. I like to talk to God. But I don't believe in God any more. I'm not crazy. Nor at odds with myself. Nor out of touch with reality. I'm just a normal human being, living a normal human life.  As noted in my previous post, the brains of Homo sapiens' have come up with all kinds of amazing concepts. We are creative thinkers. Unlike other mammals (so far as is known), people…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Good article on mindfulness meditation

As sort of a counterpoint to a recent post, Buddhists are wrong about a "witnessing mind," check out How Meditation Works. This story in The Atlantic is a good overview of mindfulness meditation from a secular scientific perspective. I still wonder what it means to watch thoughts arise or be aware of emotions blossoming. Hard to believe that our consciousness is outside of the brain where all of this stuff is going on. Thus it sure seems like being "mindful" of what the mind is doing is another activity of the mind that we can be mindful of. And, of…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Buddhists are wrong about a “witnessing mind”

OK, admitted: my previous post about a Speculative Non-Buddhism essay was pretty damn intellectually intense for summer reading.  I thought of writing about something lighter today, but decided to make another attempt at conveying what I like about what little I know about what those guys at Speculative Non-Buddhism seem to be up to. (Hope that last sentence conveys my uncertainty about what their goal is; these are the most articulate, deep, philosophically-sophisticated Buddhists-who-aren't-really- Buddhists I've ever come across; hard to fathom them after just a little reading.) First, a note about my own split personality toward Buddhism. Part of me…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Embrace with joy life’s “one damn thing after another”

A few days ago I revealed the meaning of life: one damn thing after another. (Note: I agreed with a commenter that "damn" sounds negative; however, I am using it in the sense of wow, as in damn! she's a fine-looking babe!) With several dog walks and even more cups of coffee having stimulated my psyche since that post, I've delved more deeply into the astounding richness of that five-word encapsulation of what life is all about.  I'm nowhere near the end of grokking the nuances of one damn thing after another. But with every damn thing that passes through my mind when…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Inner speech: who am I talking to inside my head?

I talk to myself a lot. I'm doing that now. I don't really know what I'm going to say in this blog post until a voice speaks inside my head. It seems to speak simultaneously with both my thinking and my typing -- inner speech, thought, and communication all happening together in some mysterious fashion. This feels normal to me. And according to an article in this week's issue of New Scientist, "LIfe in the Chatter Box," most people do the same thing. Here's how the article starts out: Our inner speech turns out to shape our thoughts and decisions…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Parts of a discarded religion can fit into a new spiritual practice

Reuse. Recycle.  Good advice for handling material stuff. Also practices that can be used with religious stuff. Recently someone emailed me, asking whether I still repeated the mantra I was taught after being initiated into a guru-based meditation practice. Part of my reply was: Usually I don't repeat the RSSB mantra. But sometimes I do, sort of for old time's sake. I figure that I repeated it so many times over the many years, it must have formed some sort of concentrative relaxed groove in my brain. It's kind of comforting to repeat the Five Names. Sometimes I do it…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

JOOTSing — Jumping Out Of The System

Sounds good to me, this Jootsing thing. Learned about it in Chapter 8 of Daniel Dennett's new book, "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking." Joots is a term coined by Douglas Hofstadter. It stands for "Jumping Out Of The System." Jootsing is doing that. This is an important tactic not just in science and philosophy, but also in the arts. Creativity, that ardently sought but only rarely found virtue, often is a heretofore unimagined violation of the rules of the system from which it springs. ...When you are confronting a scientific or philsophical problem, the system you need to…
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Posted inMiracles Spiritual practice/meditation

Thoughts about Yogananda’s Kriya Yoga

Here's two email messages that I got from a woman who practices Kriya Yoga and has had some pretty amazing yogic experiences. Yet she considers that the experiences are entirely based on the body/brain. The book referred to in the first message is Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi." Way back when (early 70's probably) I read the book and marveled at the far-out descriptions of mystical goings-on. Message #1: Hi Brian, Yes, unfortunately, a lot of people believed what Yogananda experienced was true. This is what helped build the organization he founded in California... The Self Realization Fellowship which later…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

God talks to lots of people… the mind talking to itself

Has God ever talked to you? Have you ever heard divine sounds, or seen divine visions? If so, you've got lots of company according to "Is That God Talking?" by T.M. Luhrmann, a professor of anthropology at Stanford. A questionnaire posed to 375 college students found that 71 percent reported vocal hallucinations of some kind, according to a study published in 1984 (a finding consistent with my own research). A 2000 study found that 38.7 percent of the population reported visual, auditory or other hallucinations, including out-of-body experiences. Interesting.  Fairly frequently people post comments on this blog or send me emails about…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Without religion, I enjoy feeling normal and not special

Recently I experienced an insignificant moment on an airplane which reminded me of how, when I was religious, experiences like this took on a wildly undeserved meaning. The flight attendants were coming down the aisle on their last beverage service before the plane landed. Sitting way in the back, I could hear repeatedly, "Would you like a complimentary Mai Tai?" I started to think about what I'd say when the two women got to my aisle.  I've probably only had a couple of Mai Tai's in my life. In fact, likely I've consumed less than a dozen alcoholic mixed drinks…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Be a real actual body, not an imagined abstract soul

What are we? Ah, there's an ageless question. Matter? Energy? Mind? Spirit? Soul? A combination? As noted in a post from a few years back, "Feeling the spirit... via body or soul?," I used to believe that our true nature was non-material soul-consciousness. After I died, or maybe before if my meditation bore fruit, I'd soar into a spiritual realm of existence and enjoy a soulful (literally) existence. Yet where is the evidence for this? Nowhere. Except in the minds of people who believe this sort of stuff -- which seemingly includes the majority of the world's population, given how…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Why I don’t like “Our thoughts and prayers are with you”

No, they're not. Not mine at least.  That's what goes through my mind whenever I hear someone say, "Our thoughts and prayers are with you." Which has happened a lot after the bombing attack at the Boston Marathon. I can understand why people say this. But it grates on me.  For one thing, that "our" seems to imply that anyone within reach of the speaker's voice, such as those listening to President Obama on radio or TV, share those sentiments. And if you don't... Well, you must not care about the dead and injured. Not true. Actually, I do.  Yet…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Benefits of meditation being proven by science

There's little or no evidence of God or the supernatural. But there's increasing evidence that meditating and being mindful of the here and now can have positive effects. So my feeling is, why not start (and, likely, end) our spiritual journey by focusing on what we know exists, physical reality. Which, of course, includes the physical brain. The brain's activity results in what is called "mind." Mind then can influence the rest of physical reality, including the body integrated with the brain, along with the brain itself.  Pretty cool. Nothing mystical here. Nothing airy-fairy. Nothing beyond the bounds of common sense.…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

To be “spiritual,” get physical

Back in my churched days, I believed that being spiritual meant going beyond the physical. So I meditated countless hours with eyes shut and ears closed off from the material world. In other words, the world.  The only world.  Many would disagree with those italicized emphases, of course. Heck, I would have disagreed with myself not many years ago.  They, which included me for about thirty-five years, believe that God, or whatever divine entity undergirds existence, is only loosely connected with physical reality. Some religions view this world as maya, illusion. Others, as a temporary way station that we pass…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Roger Ebert: “I do not fear death”

Roger Ebert died yesterday. When I heard the news, I was a lot sadder than I usually am when I learn someone famous has died. Ebert meant a lot to me, though I never saw him in person. He was a noted movie reviewer here in the United States. For many years watching "Siskel and Ebert" every week was a TV must. Back in those pre-Internet days this was how I learned what movies were worth watching and which weren't. Their "two thumbs up" was all I needed to buy a ticket when a film came to town. Ever since,…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Embrace awe that existence exists, not religion

It happened again today. That sudden "bottom falling out from under me" feeling, sort of the mental equivalent of being startled by an elevator going into free fall. I like the feeling. It's the most genuine sensation of spirituality, not really an apt word, but best I can come up with, that comes over me in my churchless way of looking at the world. What it is -- and I'm also struggling to find the right words here -- is awe that existence exists.  (Other attempts I've made to describe that marvelous mystery can be found scattered through this search, by…
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Posted inMystics Spiritual practice/meditation

What is meant by a “fake” guru?

A few days ago I wrote a blog post called "Kumare: truthful movie about a fake guru." Here I want to do some additional pondering about what it means to be fake.  This is a subject of more than theoretical interest to me. Back in my college years, 1969-70, I studied yoga and meditation with a long-haired, charismatic teacher who looked a lot like the movie's Kumare (even though my teacher was Greek, and Vikram Ghandi, who became "Kumare," is Indian.) My weird story of how I switched from the first guru to another guru can be found here. l…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual Naturalism appeals to my churchless non-soul

Thanks to an email from Alex Szeto, I learned about Spiritual Naturalism. After reading some articles on the website of the Spiritual Naturalist Society, I haven't found much that I disagree with.  But given my often-disagreeable nature, I'm sure if I dug deeper, I would. Which wouldn't bother Spiritual Naturalists, because they embrace science, reason, and such, not rigid dogma, blind faith, and unarguable thou shalt's.  "What is Spiritual Naturalism?" included a nice description of what "spirituality" can mean to someone who doesn't believe in God or the supernatural. Naturalism is a view of the world that includes those things which…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Being totally into what we do makes us godlike: kamiwaza

I've finished Seth Godin's book, "The Icarus Deception," that I blogged about before in Here's something to be afraid of: fear.  I didn't find it astoundingly inspiring or informative. However, it did reinforce some notions I already hold, and said some old stuff in some new ways. And I did learn some new things. Had never heard of the Japanese word kamiwaza before. Godin writes: Superman. Thor. Moses. Athena. George Gershwin. Thomas Edison -- they each represent part of what it is to be human; they are inside all of us. We know we are capable of this -- to…
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