Posted inBooks

“The Untethered Soul” gets a 3/4 churchless thumbs up

Let's start mildly negative with this book review so I can end up strongly positive. I can understand why the author, Michael A. Singer, wanted this blurb prominently displayed on the cover, but I was turned off by it:"Read this book carefully and you will get more than a glimpse of eternity."     --Deepak ChopraI haven't been impressed by Chopra's own writings, though some of what he says resonates with me. So I was afraid that "The Untethered Soul" was going to be as New Age'y as Chopra's blurb implied.More than a glimpse of eternity? Gag me with a skeptical spoon.…
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Posted inReligions Science

Ex-Mormon blasts blind faith…wonderfully

Proving that my ego loss has quite a ways to go, one of my greatest compliments is "Hey, that guy is brilliant. He sounds just like me!" Or, in this case, even more me that I am.Because I aspire to some of the great writing and thinking that Jonathan Montgomery churns out as the "Salt Lake City Freethinking Examiner," but I've got to bow down before some of the posts that I just read.Example: in Why praying for confirmation of truth cannot work, he throws in a flowchart of faith-based belief. Two big churchless thumbs-up, Jonathan! You moved away from…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

I answer questions about the once-churched me

I was planning to write a blog post about another subject tonight. But, hey, when someone leaves a comment on an Open Thread that focuses on me, wanting me to answer some questions about me, suddenly I found this topic a lot more interesting.I'll put "Cell's" words in italics and my response in normal type.------------------------------ Brian, may I ask a few questions of you? I would just send you an email, but I think that some external input could be helpful, too.No problem. I love questions. Especially ones I can answer. Since they're about me, that's a subject I have…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A dialogue about Radha Soami Satsang Beas

A few days ago I posted a message from Shiloh, "The anguish of losing a loved one to exotic religion." That was part of my communications with her. Here's the other part: a question and answer dialogue we had about Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the India-based spiritual organization that is the exotic religion Shiloh was concerned about.We exchanged several email messages after Shiloh wrote to me, asking if I'd help her better understand the organization that I was an active member of for many years. Here's our Q & A exchange, starting with some introductory remarks and moving to eight…
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Posted inComments

Open Thread 5

Here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. From now on comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free. No personal attacks on other commenters (or me), please: criticize a message, not the messenger.
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

The anguish of losing a loved one to exotic religion

Here's a well-written, thoughtful message from a woman who is disturbed that her sister has joined the spiritual group that I was a member of for many years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). Shiloh emailed me a while back, asking some questions about RSSB that I answered. I'll share those Q & A in another post soon. I asked Shiloh if she'd be OK with me sharing her thoughts in a blog post. She was. And chose the title for this post.Shiloh expresses herself well. She's a great example of how someone can be churchless, yet godly. As I often say…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Without God, how can religion be divine?

I thought I'd just thrown twenty bucks down a non-fiction hole. A few scant hours after buying Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God" (at 25% off!) my wife, who was reading the Sunday Oregonian, said: "You're not going to like this review of the book you just got." She was right. Thumbing through the first few pages of the book while considering whether to buy it, I'd focused on Wright's first hand.On the one hand, I think gods arose as illusions, and the subsequent history of the idea of god is, in some sense, the evolution of an illusion.That elicited a…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Churchless folks have revelations also

When I used to give talks (a.k.a. satsangs) at gatherings of the India-based spiritual group that I was a long time member of, one of my stock lines was "The easiest vow for most of us to follow is the injunction not to disclose our inner experiences."Ha-ha. Laughter would follow. Because people knew that I was speaking the truth: meditation resulted in almost precisely zilch, nada, zero enlightenment or ensoundenment experiences (the practices of this organization were intended to bring about contact with divine light and sound).So when the guru enjoined his disciples not to speak about their grand mystical…
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Posted inComments

Open Thread 4

Here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. From now on comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free.
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Posted inWu Project

Know yourself first, God second (if at all)

Often it's said, "God is mystery." People love mysteries. They're interesting, intriguing, and, well, mysterious. So religious believers, rather strangely, somehow combine an acceptance of well-defined dogmas, teachings, commandments, and such with an embrace of a Great Unknown.Mysticism, to which I'm considerably more attracted than religion, dumps the "acceptance" stuff and jumps right into the "embrace." Mystics say, I want mystery (that's why they're called mystics).So does science. The known is appealing to scientists. But it's the unknown that really gets their truth-seeking juices flowing. The central thing that differentiates my churched self from my churchless self is this: now I've…
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Posted inComments

Jerk leads to temporary comment moderation

I'm temporarily going to comment moderation on this blog, where I approve comments before they are published, because Neut er all (a.k.a. Walker, JAP, etc.) has been posting comments under other people's names -- tAo, Catherine, Robert, others, including me, Blogger Brian.I can tolerate insults and attacks on me, but not when they involve other people. Since I have a life apart from blogging, I can't delete identity theft comments as soon as the jerk posts them.As I've said before, I've been reluctant to go to comment moderation because I want comment conversations on this blog to be as easy…
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Posted inMystics Spiritual practice/meditation

Mysticism is all about doing…nothing

I used to work hard at meditation. I did a lot of mantra repetition, several hours at a stretch. This was supposed to get me into an elevated state of consciousness where mystical sound and light phenomena would appear.Now, my approach is to do as little as possible when I meditate each morning. I think of it as the lazy guy's way to enlightenment (assuming enlightenment exists -- a whole other question).It's nice to know that a noted student of mysticism, Robert K.C. Forman, says that I'm on the right track. Here's an excerpt from his book, "Mysticism, Mind, Consciousness"…
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Posted inComments

Open Thread 3

Here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. From now on comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free.
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Posted inReligions

Shoddy religious arguments keep being repeated

One of the pleasures of having a blog devoted to the praise of churchlessness is being exposed to the strange reasonings of religious true believers. If you're a regular reader of comments here, you know what I mean.I'm sincere about the "pleasure" part. Disagreements are part of the spice of life. If everybody thought the same way, that'd be horribly boring. But I enjoy creative, strong, substantial arguments in favor of religiosity (or against science and rationality). After almost five years of hearing the same platitudinous, weak, flimsy arguments, I frequently start reading a fundamentalist's comment and think, "Oh no,…
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Posted inBooks

Floating in a boundless sea

Before Jed McKenna's "Spiritual Enlightenment" is put away on a shelf, I wanted to add some positivity to my previous mostly negative post about the book -- which I finished today.I still don't like how McKenna fictionalizes what is presented as reality: that he is an enlightened teacher who presides over a fawning group of non-dual truth seekers at his quasi-ashram in rural Iowa. And I still doubt both that enlightenment exists, at least in the fashion McKenna describes it to be, or that he has achieved the state of all-knowing clarity which McKenna annoyingly claims on page after page…
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Posted inComments

Open Thread 2

Here's another Open Thread (previous OT is still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. From now on comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free.
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Posted inVedanta/Advaita

Jed McKenna — an illusion of enlightenment?

In "Spiritual Enlightenment," Jed McKenna tells us that he is enlightened. In fact, he says that a lot. Which got me to thinking, now that I'm a bit over halfway through the book (which was recommended to me by an old friend)... Does enlightenment exist?If so, what the heck is it"?How would we know someone is enlightened? Other questions come to mind also, because this is one of those intriguing/exasperating books that make me say "what a bunch of crap" on one page, and "right on, brother Jed" on the next. Such as, does Jed McKenna exist as the sort…
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Posted inScience

Are auras real? Yes and no.

Recently Maggie sent me a scanned photo of her aura that was taken 10-15 years ago. She asked for a particular caption when I shared it on my blog: Maggie's Radiant Form. Glad to oblige. Maggie wanted me to point out: "There are two types, one like mine which shows the colours of your personal energies (everyone's is different) and the second Kirlian photos which is a lot of squiggles and lines. Only experts can read those with any accuracy. The first type you have to have the gift of sight or clairvoyance."I told her that I didn't know much…
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Posted inComments

Open thread

Commenting experiment: an Open Thread post. Meaning, leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. From now on comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free. If this works out, I'll put up a new Open Thread weekly or so.
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Posted inWu Project

Existentialism and churchlessness: great fit

I've been rediscovering existentialist philosophy lately, since I'm re-reading Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" after a long absence from the pages I densely highlighted decades ago.Sartre was an atheist. Atheist existentialism isn't the only form of this philosophy, but non-belief in God is much more compatible with an existentialist perspective than believing is.It's tough to encapsulate Sartre's outlook on life. He's a marvelously rich and complex thinker. I love getting into his head via what he wrote in "Being and Nothingness." Sartre often writes in a dense intellectual style, but (thankfully) he frequently throws in nuggets of simplicity that inspire…
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