Posted inNeuroscience Radha Soami Satsang Beas

We humans are good at making illusory magic

Almost everybody enjoys a good magic show. I sure do. But hardly anyone actually believes in magic. We understand that when a magician does something that appears to violate everyday laws of nature, that trick is based on illusory magic, not genuine magic. An article in the April 12, 2025 issue of New Scientist, "Magicology," talks about how psychologists are looking to magic tricks to better understand how our brains make sense of the world around us. I found this example fascinating. A classic deception known as the “vanishing ball illusion” – already well-known when Binet discussed it in 1894…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My Oregon softball obsession shows the pluses and minuses of attachment

For 35 years I belonged to an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that was an offshoot of the broader Sant Mat movement. As I wrote about in 2013, RSSB had a decided renunciative focus, as contrasted with a life-affirming focus. For about 35 years I was a member of an India-based organization headed up by a guru whose teachings were definitely in the renunciative camp. The goal was to leave this physical world behind and find a better one in higher realms of reality. To do that, it was necessary to beware of the Five Deadly Foes, lust,…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

Criticism of Israel, a nation, is not antisemitism since Judaism is a religion

Most people in the United States are Christian. This doesn't mean that anyone who criticizes the United States is anti-Christian. Likewise, most people in Israel are Jewish. This doesn't mean that anyone who criticizes Israel is anti-Jewish, or antisemitic (which means hatred of, or prejudice toward, Jews). Of course, it is possible to be anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism, or anti-religion in general. Being an atheist, I lean decidedly in that direction. But I'm equal opportunity in this regard: I find all religions ridiculous in my current state of unbelieving, though I'm attracted to Buddhism in its non-supernatural form.  Recently on my Salem…
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Posted inNeuroscience

Emotions aren’t good or bad; they are just information

The title of this blog post is a quote from a book by psychologist Ethan Kross, Shift: Managing Your Emotions -- So They Don't Manage You, that I've just started reading after seeing a mention of it in a recent New Scientist article about emotions. I'll have more to say about the book after I get further into it. So far, I'm enjoying some fresh insights about emotions, which obviously are key to how we experience the world. Everything outwardly can be going fine with us, but if we feel sad, disappointed, listless, or are under the sway of some…
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Posted inMorality

Reaction to Biden’s cancer diagnosis shows power of empathy and compassion

Today the news broke that Joe Biden, the former president of the United States, has a serious variety of prostate cancer.  Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, with metastasis to the bone, according to a statement from his personal office Sunday. Doctors diagnosed Biden last week with a prostate nodule after he experienced increasing urinary symptoms. By Friday, they diagnosed him with cancer. Biden’s office said the cancer “appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.” A spokesperson said in a statement that the 82-year-old Biden and his family are reviewing…
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Posted inMindfulness

What we do isn’t as important as how we do it…mindfully

Maybe it wasn't much, but I'll take it. A few days ago I found that an insight which I've rationally known for a long time had partially passed through the dividing line between intellectual understanding and experiential understanding. Meaning, the insight now wasn't so much something that I thought about, but something that had become more of my basic attitude to life. Put into words, my aha! sounds rather trite. Yet it resonated with me. I realized that I'll always be disappointed if my goal is to resolve the problems in my life. For as soon as I deal with…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Here’s a story of someone’s Grand Disillusion with RSSB and Gurinder Singh

It's always a pleasure to hear from someone who has become disillusioned with a religion. In this case, it was a person who had a history fairly similar to mine with an India-based religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that is headed up by a guru. Below you can read the document this person sent to me that's called "The Grand Disillusion." They want to remain anonymous, but said I could share this info about them. The Dera is the RSSB headquarters in the Punjab. Gurinder Singh is the current RSSB guru. Charan Singh was the guru prior to Gurinder…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

There’s value in experiencing new things, even if you’re not sure you’ll like them

We simply don't know what the future will bring. That's a basic fact of life. I was reminded of that today when I rummaged through a drawer where I keep blank notebooks and notepads, making room for a new supply I'd gotten from Amazon. Down at the bottom of a bunch of rarely used stuff was an envelope. On it I'd written "Will (open -- obviously -- only if I die)" It was a one-page document dated March 2, 1991 called Last will and testament.  I'd written it in a period between my marriage to Laurel in 1990 and whenever…
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Posted inAlan Watts Free will

Freedom, says Alan Watts, isn’t personal but a quality of the world

I don't believe in free will. But I believe in freedom. This isn't a freedom of my personal will to do what I choose. It is the freedom of realizing that I'm part of the unified whole we call the universe.  This view is scientific. I much prefer it to unscientific notions of free will that basically say, "Because we humans feel that we have free will, it must be so." Unfortunately, feelings have little or nothing to do with truth. In his book, Determined, Robert Sapolsky laid out the reasons why free will is an illusion. An appealing illusion,…
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Posted inAlan Watts Christianity/Jesus

I ponder the new Pope and the present moment

This morning I turned our TV on, wanting to watch some news while I did my physical therapy exercises, to find that CNN's attention was focused on the Vatican following white smoke coming from a chimney -- the sign, along with bells, that a new Pope has been elected by the cardinals. I found this fascinating in a theatrical sense. Meaning, since I'm not at all religious and don't believe in God, who the Pope is only matters to me in a "political" fashion. I liked Pope Francis because he genuinely cared about the poor and downtrodden, a moral quality…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Deep thoughts about my obsession with a frustrating Starlink internet problem

For a bit more than 24 hours I've been obsessed. Not with the state of suffering humanity. Not with how I can become a better person. Not with any high level moral obsession that I'd be proud of. No, my obsession was with why our normally reliable Starlink satellite internet had stopped working. This is our only genuine broadband option out here in the wilds of rural south Salem, Oregon, where we live a whole six miles from the city limits of a state capital but have "broadband" options that people in Outer Mongolia would scoff at. (6-7 Mbps DSL…
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Posted inMeaning of life

If an experience promises to transform us, it’s difficult to decide about it

Should you become a vampire if the opportunity presented itself? More realistically, should you have a child? If you're deaf from birth, should you get a cochlear implant?  These questions, among others, are raised by philosopher L.A. Paul in her book, Transformative Experience. It's a fascinating look at something I'd never thought much about before: if an experience promises to transform us, it's difficult to decide whether to have the experience. I'll add a question that came to mind as I read the book. Should you join a religion or other form of spirituality that claims to be able to…
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Posted inDelusions Spiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

Gurus take us into the realm of lost souls

After writing about Steven Harrison's book in my previous post, "Doing Nothing -- a book about ending the spiritual search," below are additional passages that appealed to me. Which doesn't mean that I resonate with everything in Doing Nothing. Some parts are a bit overly New Age'y for me, and I came across a mention of divinity that seems at odds with Harrison's message. But on the whole, I enjoy his blunt assessment of the problem with spiritual searching. Basically, it boils down to a simple assertion that is in line with both neuroscience and Zen: whenever we're seeking salvation,…
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Posted inDelusions Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

Doing Nothing — a book about ending the spiritual search

Back in 2013 I wrote a blog post about a book by Steven Harrison, Doing Nothing: Coming to the End of the Spiritual Search. I was pretty positive about the book in "Doing Nothing. Sounds like my kind of anti-religion," though I hadn't read it. Here's a tip for authors of books in the spirituality, religion, mysticism, and meditation genres: If you want readers to finish your book, don't include a mention of another title like "Doing Nothing: Coming to the End of the Spritual Search." I stopped reading during my pre-meditation quiet time when I came to that mention.…
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Posted inBuddhism Consciousness Taoism/Tai Chi

What is changeless? Important question that I’m not sure about.

I stay in touch with a few people from my high school years, including an old friend that I went to elementary school with. He's as philosophically and spiritually minded as I am, so I enjoy our periodic email exchanges. In our most recent sharing of views, my friend included a quote from a previous message I'd sent him. I was referring to Robert Wright, the author of Why Buddhism is True, a book I've written about on this blog. Wright says that the main illusions Buddhism can help us dissolve are a belief in an enduring unchanging self, and…
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Posted inMindfulness Neuroscience

I like the idea that who I am is competing brain modules, not a distinct self

UPDATE: If you want to get the gist of Kurzban's book in a 17 minute video, rather than buying and reading the book, here's Kurzban explaining some central concepts about the brain that cause us humans to be hypocrites.  Having finished Robert Kurzban's book, Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite: Evolution and the modular mind, it's time to share some (possibly) final thoughts about the book before it gets shelved away. The basic notion of brain modules has grown on me. Though computer analogies are risky when discussing how the brain works -- the human brain is what it is,…
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Posted inConsciousness Mindfulness Neuroscience

Often I seem to be conscious, but not aware

I go back and forth, trying to decide whether being conscious and being aware are the same thing, or different things. Sometimes I equate the two. But I recall someone (Ron E.?) expressing a different opinion in a comment on one of my posts.  At the time I discounted that idea. But after what happened to me in my Tai Chi class yesterday -- which wasn't all that different from what has happened to me many times before -- I'm more inclined to believe that being conscious and being aware are indeed distinct mental processes. We were doing a form…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 49 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.  As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread. Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Personal attacks on someone are an exception, as is hate speech. Argue with ideas, not insults. Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Reality Religions

Truth is religion’s weakness, no matter what Ross Douthat says in “Believe”

I've finished reading Ross Douthat's book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. He failed to make his case with me, because I'm still not religious. Not surprisingly, there were few discussions of truth in the book. This is religion's glaring weakness, no matter what faith appeals to you. The key question, how do we know it is true?, can't be answered persuasively by any religion, notably including Christianity (Douthat is proudly Catholic). So Douthat recommends what he calls "true'ish" belief. Basically this means that if you believe in some sort of divinity inhabiting some sort of supernatural realm, you're closer…
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Posted inAtheism Politics Religions

“Brainwashing” ignores the fact that everything alters the mind

I'm old enough to remember when brainwashing was a more commonly used word than it is now. An article by Nikhil Krishnan in the April 7 issue of The New Yorker, "It's Always the Other Side That's Been Brainwashed," reminded me of this. During the Korean War, American prisoners of war were subjected to brainwashing by Chinese authorities in a sometimes successful attempt to make the prisoners believe that the values of their country were less desirable than communism.  In 1962, my freshman year in high school, a fictional movie about this was released, The Manchurian Candidate.  The plot centers on…
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