Posted inReligions Science

Separating numinous from supernatural

Occasionally "cc," a regular commenter on this blog, sends me email messages. They're as cogent, interesting, and well-written as his comments.  Below is a recently-received message that deserves sharing. One of the things I like most about cc's style is the open-endedness of his thoughts. Usually what he says leaves me with more questions, rather than answers. Or questions about answers. Reading the following message, I was struck by the words numinous and numinosity. "Numinous" usually is considered to belong in the realm of religion, referring to some sort of divine experience.  But the Wikipedia article notes that numinous can…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

I reveal Mystery of the Cosmos: its strange!

Yesterday I achieved one of my lifelong goals: I became a newspaper columnist. Sure, the paper is Salem Weekly -- which actually is published every two weeks, but since this is Salem's alternative newspaper, likely most of the readers are too stoned to notice. And Salem Weekly is free. So I'm a columnist in a paper which gets grabbed out of boxes, sometimes by people who need a foundation layer for their kitty litter. But like I said in a post on my other blog: Still, hey, I'm a columnist! Along with Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman. I'm just one…
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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 inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

“Dirty money” tied to RSSB guru’s Ranbaxy wealth

Like I said in this post, there's a tangled web of financial dealings surrounding the newfound wealth of Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family.  Gurinder Singh is the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based spiritual organization I used to be a member of. Theologically, he is considered to be "god in human form." Financially, his family has become one of the richest in India, thanks to gifting of Religare stock by several relatives (and RSSB initiates), Malvinder and Shivinder Singh. Another post of mine describes the money connections between Religare and the guru. Religare is a company that…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Gurinder Singh’s son become CEO of Religare subsidiary

Money (lots of it) and spirituality (questionable amount of it) continue to mix at Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the Indian religious organization I used to be a part of. Someone just emailed me a link to this news story, "Religare Health Trust names Gurpreet Dhillon as CEO." Religare Health Trust (RHT), a wholly owned subsidiary of Delhi-based Religare Enterprise Ltd (REL), has named Gurpreet Dhillon as CEO of the company. Earlier, Dhillon was working as the executive director and COO of RHT. ...Gurpreet Dhillon is also a second cousin of the billionaire brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh who are the…
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Posted inUncategorized

Meditation is good for your genes. So, likely, is patting a dog.

I've meditated every day since 1970, with just a handful of exceptions. That's over forty years. During most of that time I thought I was engaged in a spiritual journey from illusion to enlightenment. Now, I don't believe much, if at all, in that possibility. But I still meditate. Every day. Along with doing Tai Chi at least three days a week, which is a form of moving meditation.  Meditation is good for the body and mind. So those who don't believe in soul or spirit can benefit from meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, mindfulness, and other ways of eliciting the…
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Posted inGod Reality

Praying to a personal God requires us to be a “person”

I'm not big on praying. A few days ago I called it absurd, even in the face of tragedy. Prayers alone have zero effect on anything or anyone. Prayers plus action to change things... that can work. Philosophically, though, praying raises some interesting questions.  Is the entity being prayed to a personal being, or not? Usually we assume that it is, for good reason. Impersonal entities, like a stone, gravity, or a computer, aren't considered to be capable of responding to prayers.  (Nonetheless, I've engaged in quite of bit of dialoguing with computers over the years; particularly Windows machines where…
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Posted inGod

Oklahoma tornado tragedy shows absurdity of prayer

I understand why people pray. I've done a lot of praying myself. It's a natural reaction to appeal to a higher power when a loved one is seriously ill, lives are in danger, or some other unwanted event begs for divine intervention. But while the motivation for prayer is utterly human, so is prayer itself. Almost certainly there is no God watching over us, listening to pleas for this and that, deciding which to grant and which to ignore. I'm thankful for this. Because it would be worse if actually there were a God to pray to, a supernatural being…
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Posted inReality Science

“The hard problem” of consciousness may not exist

This week's issue of New Scientist has a special section on consciousness. Conscious being that I am, I enjoyed reading about whatever the heck my consciousness consists of. The articles contained a lot of interesting information. Much progress is being made on understanding how the brain works, including what causes something to be conscious rather unconscious. For example: One of the most prominent attempts to turn this experimental data into a theory of consciousness is known as the "global neuronal workspace" model. This suggests that input from our eyes, ears and so on, is first processed unconsciously, primarily in sensory…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I changed a Bollywood actor’s life… turning him vegetarian

Until recently I'd never heard of Shahid Kapoor, a Bollywood actor in India. But it turns out that we have a connection: after reading my book, Life is Fair, Kapoor became a vegetarian. Here's the tale, as told in "The Man Who Changed Shahid Kapoor's Life"  His father, who follows Radha Soami, had been preaching to him for years about the benefits of eating only what is grown in the farms, had no effect on him; but the book converted him. A decade ago Shahid Kapoor turned vegetarian. He got on to a flight with a book Life Is Fair…
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Posted inReligions

Fireplaces are bad for you. Also, pleasant. Like religion.

Here's a thought-provoking You Tube video: someone reading aloud Sam Harris' essay "The Fireplace Delusion."  It's about how we can emotionally and intuitively enjoy something, while understanding reasonably and factually that this thing isn't good for us. We have a wood stove in our house, but we don't use it very much -- for reasons described in the video. Plus, my wife has allergies. However, I enjoy burning wood outside.  I'm not sure how well this fireplace: religion metaphor works. Yet like almost everything Sam Harris writes, it makes you think.   
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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

Religions make a Big Problem out of life’s little problems

We've all got problems. Some days it seems like life is nothing but one problem popping up after another. Car won't start. Forgot to pay credit card bill. Child came home with bad report card. Faucet has started leaking. Knee is hurting for some reason. Of course, much of life is problem-free. Or seemingly so. Even when things are going well, usually there's some nagging glitch that keeps an enjoyable experience from being perfectly so. I'm enjoying the movie, but, geez, why does that guy behind me have to eat his popcorn so noisily? There's no problem in getting help…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

A life lesson about “faith” I’ve learned on Maui, bodyboarding

Whenever I go to Maui, I learn something. Not from a book, holy or otherwise. Not from a person, revered or otherwise.  From experience. The best teacher. Usually from one of my favorite experiences, bodyboarding, which I'm only able to do in warm wavy water, something Hawaii has in abundance (in my home state, Oregon, we've got great ocean waves, but, damn, they're cold.) Bloggings about some of the past life lessons I've learned on Maui can be perused here, here, and here. What follows are insights gained on my most recent Maui visit. After some middling-good wave days, OK…
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Posted inBooks God

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…
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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 inHumor

Who knew Louis C.K. was a (funny) philosopher?

Being an admirer of the American comedian Louis C.K., naturally I was attracted to the title of a Yoga Brains post I came across: "The Yoga of Louis C.K." It's worth a read. Excerpt: With that in mind, the below clip, which ended comedian Louis C.K.’s HBO special ‘Oh My God,’ while hilariously funny (and worth watching on those merits alone), points to the deep rift we humans suffer on a daily basis: the distance between what we think and how we, at least sometimes, act. Or, at the very least, the conflicting chorus of voices that consistently ring out…
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