Posted inReality Taoism/Tai Chi

Independence is impossible

So here we are in the United States, celebrating Independence Day this July 4, and my philosophical mind is thinking independence is impossible. And who would want it, anyway? But lest my fellow citizens accuse me of wishing that the colonies had never broken away from Britain (ugh! what a horrible idea; I'd have to watch boring soccer rather than exciting football), I'm talking about a much more cosmic level of reality than political. Religions are big on independence, though the concept almost always is expressed using different terms, such as salvation and liberation. Whether Eastern or Western, dualistic sorts…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religion, like fast food, makes you unnaturally large

Since I've given up religion, I've become a lot more content with my smallness. As noted before, I'm no longer obsessed with expanding my consciousness, enlarging my connection with God, or growing my spiritual understanding. Small things please me now much more than they did before. I guess you could say I've lost a lot of ego-weight after discarding a religious belief system that had grandiose goals and taught that human beings could attain perfection. This morning I forgot to put the canned dog food back in the refrigerator. There goes my claim to perfection. To which I say, good…
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Posted inReligions

My response to religion: “So what?”

The way I feel about religion now is similar to how I feel about my ex-wife. Not much. Meaning, most of the time I don't think about religion, or her. I've got some pleasant memories of each, along with some unpleasant memories. But neither occupies much space in my brain these days. This wasn't the case soon after my marital and spiritual divorces. Splitting up after a lengthy attachment, it takes some time to get the other party out of your mind. For twenty-one years I've been married to another woman. However, I've had no inclination to get married to…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religious believers are acting in accord with evolution

Having arrived at a churchless view of reality, I'm amused when true believers accuse me of taking the easy way out by being a skeptic about God and other things divine'ish. They see religious belief as a courageous stand against rampant secularism -- a bold independent search for ultimate reality that transcends materialistic boundaries. Actually, the truth is far different. Religious belief is the default human condition. What takes courage, effort, and determination is going against the religious current that sweeps the vast majority of people into a faith-based ocean. Interestingly, the evidence for this is scientific. Evolutionary psychology has…
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Posted inReality

Objective reality isn’t for us to unravel

I only want to devote a half hour or so to writing a blog post tonight, so I'll tackle a simple subject: what is reality? I'm not being facetious. It actually is easier to talk about the Big Questions of life rather than the small ones. I feel like I've got a pretty good understanding of the basic elements of reality. But how my computer's operating system works behind the scenes... that's a huge mystery to me. What are those elements? Subjectivity and objectivity. Meaning, basically: my subjective experience is mine alone. As is yours. As is our dog's. Nobody…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Entertaining email from an ex-satsangi

It's nice to inspect my email inbox when I get up in the morning and find a message like this one. Witty. Intelligent. Humorous. Why, this guy reminds me of me. For 17 years he followed the Radha Soami Satsang Beas party line until... he didn't. Brian,I am also an initiate of Charan Singh's (1975).   Since 1993, I am also no longer following the teachings.  I really enjoyed my time in India, my mostly western US Satsangi friends and I have great respect those who are seekers.An old former Kirpal Singh devotee friend recently teasingly emailed me about how RS…
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Posted inHumor

Obedient Wives Club makes me want to convert to Islam

It looks like I've been too harsh on Islam, because Indonesia's Obedient Wives Club has made me realize how this religion can come up with some really great ideas. A new club in Indonesia that encourages women to be totally obedient to their husbands and focus on keeping them sexually satisfied has generated an outcry from some activists. The Indonesian branch of the Obedient Wives Club, launched early this month in Malaysia, claims to have about 300 members in several cities. Group leader Gina Puspita said the club would offer its members a package of teachings including how to treat…
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Posted inScience

“I Am” movie: emotionally satisfying, scientifically annoying

Everything is interconnected. Modern society puts too much emphasis on money. Yogurt is conscious. Random number generators around the world respond to major events like 9/11. These are some of the things that the "I Am" movie taught me. (Click on that link to watch the trailer, which captures the essence of "I Am" nicely.) OK, I have no problem with the first two messages. Interconnectedness is indeed how reality operates. And film creator Tom Shadyac uses his own life experience to persuasively argue that buying lots of stuff doesn't buy meaning or satisfaction (Shadyac made Jim Carrey a star…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Meditating without any technique feels natural now

I've meditated for most of my life. I started when I was twenty, having gotten enthused about hatha/raja yoga my junior year in college. So for more than forty years I've been getting up in the morning and meditating in some fashion. "In some fashion" implies a technique. Indeed, such has been the case. In fact, until now I've never believed that meditation was possible without a technique. Mostly I've done some form of mantra meditation -- repeating a word, or words, to keep thoughts minimal and attention focused. I'm aware that there are many other forms of meditation. What…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Taoism/Tai Chi

I dreamed within a dream. Felt a lot like reality.

Usually I don't pay much attention to my dreams. They seem to be the brain's way of processing waking life events, albeit in a often disconnected and bizarre fashion. But last night I experienced a dream that was coherent enough to be philosophically quite interesting. I suspect some of the content had to do with my going through some old files yesterday, keeping some folders and discarding others. I also drove my Mini Cooper to town and back, taking turns on our rural road the way I usually do: vigorously. My dream started out with me driving on what seemed…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Meditation should be pleasant, not a chore

This morning my pre-meditation reading was a chapter on Wu-Wei (non-action) in Alan Watt's "Tao: The Watercourse Way." The passage below reminded me of how different my meditation period is now that I've become churchless, unreligious, and dogma shunning. In a footnote to a preceding paragraph, Watts says that he is a "deplorable heretic" to those Zen practitioners who favor the "aching legs" brand of Buddhism, since to them long periods of meditation are considered to be key to enlightenment. On the other hand, those who understand the Tao delight, like cats, in just sitting and watching without any goal…
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Posted inReality Science

We are to the brain as the cosmos is to us

What's our biggest problem in life? Us. Ourselves. If there wasn't any me, I wouldn't be dissatisfied, unhappy, or feeling that a situation should be different from how it is. Of course, I also wouldn't exist. For most people, not being anything isn't an attractive solution to the irritating somethings that are part and parcel of our daily existence. But perhaps there is an in between, a middle ground which comfortably avoids the extremes of too little me (personal non-existence) and too much me (ego-encapsulated anxiety). This is the promise of many forms of spirituality, philosophy, psychotherapy, mysticism, meditation, religion,…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Why we can’t imagine the moment of our death

Thumbing through a recent issue of The New Yorker last night, I came across a thought-provoking paragraph about mortality in a personal history piece, "The Aquarium," by Aleksandar Hemon. There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live. It would be unbearably obvious that death is inscribed in everything that constitutes life, that any moment…
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Posted inMorality Science

92% of Americans believe in God. Are they normal?

Yesterday I was reading TIME magazine and came across a factoid that 92% of Americans believe in God. My first reaction? Wow, I'm part of a distinct minority. Checking on the Gallup web site, I learned that this percentage is down only slightly from the 1940's, when the polling firm started asking this question. In 1967, when I was a godless existentialist drug-crazed college student, 98% of my fellow citizens believed in God, making me even more of an exception. But am I abnormal? Another survey found that only 1% of people in the United States said they've never believed…
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Posted inGod Humor

I’m an atheist who is beloved by God

Bow down to me, religious believers, because I am the exalted one, God's most favored favorite, the beloved of whoever or whatever divinity -- assuming such exists -- lies at the heart of reality. How do I know this? In the same way the true name of God, Galobet, came to me in a French Roast-fueled revelation five years ago. So after sipping my way through some pre-meditation reading, my consciousness was marvelously attuned to Galobet’s divine message. I was flying high on the swiftly beating wings of caffeine. This proximity to Galobet’s heavenly realm allowed me to hear his…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A guru should know if he is God

Sometimes visitors to this blog ask me, via a comment or email, if I'm bitter about the thirty-five years I spent as a devotee of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) spiritual teachings. Meaning, I guess, do I feel letdown, deceived, or maliciously manipulated by the guru who initiated me in 1971 (Charan Singh) and/or his successor, Gurinder Singh, who became the head of RSSB after Charan Singh died in 1990? The truthful answer basically is no. My feelings about my "divorce" from Radha Soami Satsang Beas are pretty much the same as my feelings about the ending of my…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Humor

I like “The Thinking Atheist.” He reminds me of me.

Recently I came across The Thinking Atheist web site. It's slick and sophisticated looking, which distinguishes it from my Church of the Churchless minimalist blog design. But when I turned to the FAQ page and read the witty Q and A's of The Thinking Atheist, I realized that I was in the presence of a kindred non-soul. Namely, someone with a sense of humor who has had to deal with many of the same questions and issues that I have. This guy was a Christian of 30 years and a former Christian broadcaster. He says: I finally started "thinking" for…
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Posted inScience Universe

Embrace uncertainty, shun dogma — be a possibilian!

Dichotomies are limiting. Also, unrealistic. Theist/atheist. Believer/skeptic. Conservative/liberal. Follower/leader. Human/animal. Matter/energy. The world comes in a lot more flavors than just vanilla and chocolate. There's all sorts of shades of gray between black and white. Reality doesn't completely conform to how we Homo sapiens' conceptualize it. This is one reason I like David Eagleman's "possibilian" philosophy so much. (I've blogged about it before here and here.) Eagleman is a scientist. He recognizes that the scientific method is more than passively open-minded; science also actively seeks out new possibilities, creatively wondering "what if... ." Yet this doesn't mean giving credence to…
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Posted inScience

Conscious awareness is a small part of who we are

Mystery is a big part of why people are attracted to religions. True believers in God, or some other supernatural entity, thrill to the notion that they're diving into a vast unknown spiritual ocean whose depths can't be fathomed. Lots of devotees also embrace the idea of surrender -- turning one's life over to a higher power who knows better than we do what is good for us. Well, modern neuroscience has some news for these religious folks: if you want mystery, unfathomability, and surrender of your conscious will, look no farther than right here and right now. Because the…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Religions

Humans are naturally optimistic. Which helps explain religion.

Most people's brains are hard-wired to generate an optimistic outlook on life. Evolution, it seems, has favored an ability to look into the future and see good things happening. Such is the message of TIME magazine's cover story this week, "The Optimism Bias." It's a highly interesting article. Tali Sharot, the author, says that "optimism starts with what may be the most extraordinary of human talents: mental time travel, the ability to move back and forth through time and space in one's mind." This ability was naturally selected for in the course of Homo sapiens' evolution because it had so…
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