Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

God, can you hear me now?

It’s amazing how many people believe that God hears their prayers. Have they ever gotten a clear-cut, unambiguous, no-doubt-about-it confirmation message back from God? “Got your call. Will take request under consideration.” After I buy something from Amazon I get an almost instant email response. That way I know that the order I sent off through the electronic maze of the Internet has reached the right place and my material desire soon will be delivered to my doorstep. I’ve never gotten the same courtesy from God. Kind of makes me wonder if my calls are getting through. The “Can you…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Jesus wasn’t a Christian

Keith, a high school classmate, liked to say, “Jesus was a Jew.” That sounded shocking to me at the time. Yet it’s true. It’s also true that Jesus wasn’t a Christian. And Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist, Muhammad wasn’t a Muslim, Lao Tzu wasn’t a Taoist, Nanak wasn’t a Sikh. The people I’ve mentioned were just that: people. As Deepak Chopra observes, they weren’t the dogmas and ideologies that have come to be associated with them. Those religions and organized philosophical systems came later. Often we hear the phrase, “What would Jesus do?” Well, I’m willing to bet that if he…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Touching the Void

I didn’t expect that a mountain climbing movie would move me spiritually. Yet “Touching the Void” did. Roger Ebert’s highly laudatory review focused on how harrowing and gripping the movie was. Yes, I shared his can’t-take-my-eyes-off-the-screen experience, though it was a television in my case. But this Commonweal review by Rand Richards Cooper better describes the deeper dimensions of “Touching the Void.” I won’t bother to summarize the story in any detail—you can read the reviews if you’re not familiar with the film. It is about two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who attempted an ascent of a…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality Religions

What’s wrong with faith?

I’m often asked, generally by myself, “What’s wrong with faith? Doesn’t faith help us get through tough times and feel positive about the future?” Here’s how I answer, generally to myself: “Faith is fine when it points toward objective reality. But when faith keeps us revolving in the merry-go-round of subjective conceptions, it’s dangerous and should be discarded." Never passing up an opportunity to quote myself, this is how I discussed the issue in my book, “Return to the One”: The scientific method, by and large, is founded on the first assumption [“I’ll believe it when I see it”]: what…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual investing takes nothing

Here’s some further thoughts about spiritual investing, a subject that I’ve enjoyed pondering since writing my post of a week ago. I advised that, just as it makes great financial sense to invest in index funds that mirror an entire market, a person’s spiritual endeavors should be similarly widely diversified. However, there’s a difference between worldly and other-worldly markets that I neglected to address sufficiently before. When you buy a monetary index fund such as the Total U.S. Stock Market, you end up owning a piece of every single company stock in the United States. Thus diversification is accomplished in…
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Posted inMiracles Spiritual practice/meditation

Pray for me, I need a Mini Cooper

Happy National Day of Prayer. In honor of this day I invite everyone to pray for a worthy cause: me. To make things easy for you I’ve written out the prayer, complete with annotations: “Almighty _______ [fill in name of your chosen higher power], I beseech you to grant the unselfish desire of Brian Hines, who lives on Lake Drive in Salem, Oregon [this is needed to direct the prayer away from the other undeserving Brian Hines’ in the world, and also to make sure my desire is delivered to the right place]. “Please place a supercharged Mini Cooper, racing…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual diversification, a sound salvation strategy

In financial investing, it’s well accepted that attempting to beat the market is a fool’s game. This is why index funds are so popular (and lucrative). You don’t bet on particular stocks or bonds. Instead, you put your money in the entire universe of investments represented by an index fund, such as the U.S. Total Stock Market or the U.S. Total Bond Market. Wise financial professionals advise that if you want to save money for retirement, it’s best to invest in index funds. Increasingly, people do. But when it comes to saving their souls for eternity, most of those same…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Centering in on “The Supreme Doctrine”

Today I finished re-reading Hubert Benoit’s classic book about Zen psychology, “The Supreme Doctrine.” I’ve been quoting from “The Supreme Doctrine” in earlier posts, here and here. Now I want to take a stab at writing about this book entirely in my own words. I’d like to share what has stuck in my mind after making my way through this wonderfully insightful treatment of man’s spiritual psyche. Benoit probably wouldn’t like the word “spiritual” used to describe his book, but now I get to describe it the way I want to. That’s just the approach Benoit took toward Zen. In…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Lighter shades of ego

Love supposedly makes us selfless. Yet, does it really? Or is what we call “love” almost always just another form of ego, a lighter shade of self-interest that, nonetheless, has nearly all of the negative qualities of a honestly dark “all I care about is me” attitude? This is the position of Hubert Benoit, whose wonderful book “The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought” I continue to happily read each morning before meditating while on vacation here on Maui. Benoit, a psychiatrist, says that love projected outward is idolatrous. All of our previous self-love is transferred to another being,…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Why don’t religions evolve?

Every night I read a chapter from Richard Dawkin’s marvelous new book: “The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution.” Dawkin’s tale starts with us, Homo sapiens, and traces our evolutionary path backward in time through each divergence from a common ancestor, or Concestor. It just takes 39 steps, or rendezvous’, to meet up with the primal Eubacteria. This is as distant from modern humans as Dawkins goes; our nearest ancestors, whom we meet at Rendezvous 1 between 5 and 7 million years ago, are chimpanzees and bonobos—with whom we share Concestor 1. People are far more evolved…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation Universe

Meditating like an extra-terrestrial

What sort of spirituality would be practiced by an extra-terrestrial being? I find this an interesting question, one which points to a more practical question: “What sort of spirituality should be practiced by us right here on earth?” Many people have pondered how the world’s religions would be affected by the discovery of extra-terrestrial life—particularly life from a civilization much more advanced than ours. Physicist Paul Davies, in his article “E.T. and God,” observes that Christianity would have the biggest problem with the discovery of alien superbeings because “of all the world’s major religions, Christianity is the most species-specific.” Jesus…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

All masters but one are false

I’ve followed just two masters in my life. Of course, if “master” is taken in the broader biblical sense (“No man can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and wealth”) then I’ve had lots of masters. Everything that has led me in a direction in which I didn’t really want to go has mastered me. If I started to list all those things, this post would go on…and on…and on. So I’m not talking about those masters of me, just the two spiritual “gurus” that I pledged allegiance to sequentially several years apart. I believe that one was much more…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Feeling close to God

When do you feel close to God? By which I mean, to reality. For as I’ve noted before, if the entity we call “God” isn’t more real than anything else in the cosmos, it isn’t worth wanting—and certainly isn’t worthy of its name. When do you feel clear, simple, pure, grounded, and most importantly, real? When does the deepest truth seem to shine forth most brilliantly, shorn of the coverings that usually dim divine light? For me, I wish that I could say that it was during my periods of daily meditation. This is when I try to cast aside…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Religious questioning is natural

Like most bloggers, I love getting email. Making connections with like-minded (or unlike-minded) people from anywhere in the world is a wonderful reward for the time and effort that goes into a weblog.

Recently I got a message from another member of the spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that I’ve been involved with for thirty-five years. This is how my correspondent ended his email:

I do not know whether you will feel the following questions too personal to answer, but if you do not mind , will you mind answering them?: Are you or were you ever a satsangi? What is your spiritual philosophy these days? Can you comment at all on the Sant Mat Gurus, especially Maharaj Gurinder Singh? How do you recommend one seeks the Ultimate Truth?

By “satsangi” he meant specifically an initiate of the mystical path known variously as Sant Mat, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Science of the Soul, Surat Shabd Yoga, or Radha Soami. Satsangi is a generic word that literally means “one who associates with truth (sat).” Since many spiritual groups in India and elsewhere consider that they are on the path to knowing truth, you can be a “satsangi” of various denominations—to use a rather ill-fitting Christian term. “Satsang” is a meeting of satsangis, a service if you will.

I was asked good questions, some obviously much easier to answer than others. Though personal, I didn’t mind making a stab at answering them and have shared my response below. I realize my language will seem foreign to many people. But substitute, for example, “Pope” for “Master” and “Catholic Church” for “Radha Soami Satsang Beas” if my message seems too distant from your own experience.

My basic point is universal: after you’ve belonged to a religious or spiritual organization for more than a few years, it’s natural to be more critical of it. The more knowledgeable you become about a church, faith, philosophy, or theology, the more flaws you’ll find.

The ultimate reality we call “God” can’t be confined within any manmade system. Religions try to put bounds around boundlessness, but this is a futile exercise. Truth always finds a way to express itself. So I encourage people to trust their direct experience over abstract concepts.

When something seems wrong about the spiritual path you’re following, likely it is. If it appears that you can drop some inessential ritualistic practice, almost certainly you should. Keep what works for you; discard what doesn’t.

Here’s my mildly edited response to the questions I was asked:

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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Spiritual practice/meditation

“The Big If,” a kindred weblog

Laurel’s “Fearing Fundamentalism” article that was published in “Salem Monthly” caught the eye of a Salem writer. He emailed Laurel, expressing interest in our plans to organize a local Church of the Churchless discussion group. I’ve enjoyed browsing his “The Big If” weblog, whose masthead reads: “Some people think it’s crazy to believe in anything but death after life. Other people think it’s crazy to believe that death ends life. If death doesn't truly kill us--that's the big if--it changes everything.” Amen to that, The Muse Guy (nom de plume of the weblog’s author). It does indeed change everything. Most…
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Posted inBooks Christianity/Jesus Mystics

The Cloud of Unknowing: Devotion

“The Cloud of Unknowing,” written in the fourteenth century by an anonymous English Christian, is the fourth of my Five Books to Support the Churchless that I’ve been writing about. I’m trying to sum up the essence of each book in a single word. For “The Cloud of Unknowing” it is devotion. But this is a devotion utterly unlike that practiced by most Christians, and also unlike that practiced by almost everyone of any faith. For the author, whom I’ll call Anonymous, espouses an apophatic spirituality. As this web site explains, “apophasis” is a Greek word that means “without images.”…
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Posted inBooks Mystics Spiritual practice/meditation

Ramana: Simplicity

Ockham’s razor is a rule in science and philosophy that the simplest explanation is the best. Extending this principle to religion and spirituality, Ramana, a twentieth-century Indian mystic, shines.

Only recently did I began reading Ramana seriously. I wish I had done so earlier. I’d always thought that the Vedanta teachings which form the core of Ramana’s message were intellectual and complex. They can be, if a complex intellectual tries to communicate Vedanta.

But when the teachings are described by Ramana in the lively question and answer format of “Talks with Ramana Maharshi,” the highest form of Vedanta is revealed as marvelously simple and practical. This is Advaita, literally “not two.”

What could be simpler than one?

Advaita finds unity at the core of the cosmos. So does science. Or, at least this is what science expects to find. The quest of physicists is for the theory of everything that is the root explanation of the universe, not for the theories of everything.

Ramana’s teachings thus have an appealing scientific flavor. This is in contrast to most other spiritual paths and every religion, which expect you to believe in things that defy rational explanation or direct experience. Why? Because any faith founded on dualism necessarily posits a gap between the believer and what is believed.

If I believe in God, there obviously are two entities involved here: “I” and “God.” Given this situation, confirming my belief gets complex. Somehow I have to narrow the divide between me and divinity so what now is just a subjective idea or emotion for me becomes an undeniable objective fact.

So spiritual systems generally proscribe dogmas and theologies that amount to marching orders. Do this, don’t do that; follow this course, not that one. If the believer follows directions and treads the spiritual path in the correct manner, then the promise is that he or she someday will arrive at God’s doorstep (taking “God” to mean ultimate reality, not necessarily a personal being).

The more steps you’re asked to take, the more potential missteps there are. This is why I’m much attracted to Ramana’s simplicity. He says that all of Vedanta can be summed up in two Biblical passages: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14) and “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalms 46:10).

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Posted inBooks Christianity/Jesus Mystics

Eckhart: Detachment

Today the birth of God’s son is celebrated. Most people think this child of the Father is Jesus. Meister Eckhart, the medieval Catholic mystic theologian, suggests another possibility: it is each of us.

I find this idea much more palatable and convincing than the traditional notion that Jesus somehow was born miraculously by a virgin woman so that he could die for our sins. Eckhart considers that “virgin” really means “someone who is free of all alien images, as free in fact as that person was before he or she existed.”

This conception points us toward a state of consciousness that everyone can achieve, not just Jesus. There are many problems with modern Christianity. One of the worst is its emphasis on stories of the past rather than transformations of the present.

As we note frequently here at the Church of the Churchless, most Christians feel that if they merely believe in the divinity of Christ, that’s enough: believe and you’re saved. The exact mechanism by which salvation takes place is a mystery. How could the death on a cross of someone over two thousand years ago alter the course of someone’s life (and afterlife) now? What connection is there between the soul of Jesus and the soul of you or me?

Eckhart asks “Where is he who is born King of the Jews?” He answers, “This birth takes place in the soul just as it takes place in eternity, no more and no less. For there is only one birth, and this takes place in the essence and ground of the soul.”

So the virgin birth of God’s son didn’t only happen to Mary in the manger. This is just a metaphor and not to be taken as a historical fact. A recent article in Newsweek, “The Birth of Jesus,” points out that the four gospels don’t tell a common story about Jesus’ birth. How could they? There is no real evidence that Jesus ever spoke of how and where he was born, and neither Mary nor Joseph is cited as a direct source. A court of law would say that the whole Christmas story is hearsay and not to be trusted.

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Posted inGod Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

You’re religious, but are you right?

Most religious believers live in their own version of Lake Woebegone. In Garrison Keillor’s mythical locale all the children are above average. Similarly, in these believers’ mental habitation everyone is right about God. This is truly strange. And what is even stranger is that so few people stop to consider its strangeness. Religious Tolerance.org cites a survey of churches and religions that finds 19 major world religions subdivided into 270 large religious groups and many smaller ones. The four largest religions are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The fundamental beliefs of each one are incompatible with the other three. Even…
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