Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Hey, I’m trendy! “Manifest” is the 2024 word of the year.

I was thrilled to see that the subject I've been writing about recently, manifesting, has been named the word of the year for 2024 by the Cambridge Dictionary. (The word was "manifest," to be precise.) However, I wasn't aware of the manifest craze when I bought James Doty's book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. And I don't agree with the magical thinking side of manifesting, as mentioned in The Guardian story about the word of the year. “Manifest”, meaning to dream or will something into existence, has been named the word of 2024 by…
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Posted inNeuroscience Spiritual practice/meditation

Manifesting comes in two varieties: scientific and New Age

Before I started to write another post (this one) about James Doty's book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything, I Googled "critique of manifestation" to see what critics of this fad were saying about it. And fad it is, something I hadn't realized. I'd figured that after The Secret had been decried by thoughtful people as a New Age book full of cosmic B.S., where you can get whatever you want by aligning yourself with the esoteric Law of Attraction, people had stopped believing in this crap. But no, the crap has made a comeback…
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Posted inNeuroscience Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Mind Magic is a science-based book about manifesting what you want

If I hadn't read a review in New Scientist of James Doty's new book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything, the title and subtitle would have turned me off, since "manifestation" sounds New Age'y, and "how it changes everything" sounds over-the-top. But the review stressed the neuroscience part, which I liked. And after the book arrived via Amazon a few days ago, I really liked the first sentence of the introduction, along with the entire first few paragraphs. THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. It may not sound like it, but this is…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Is meditation about feeling better or about knowing what’s true?

I just came across a piece of paper where I'd jotted down some thoughts about meditation that could serve as the basis for a churchless blog post.  I have no idea how long ago those thoughts came to mind. Must have been a while, since I have no recollection of doing this. No matter. I'll make use of them regardless. My first thought was, "Is meditation like learning to play music, where you practice and get better and better, or is it openness where beliefs about how things are is let go in favor of how things actually are?" The…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science says religion isn’t so much wrong, as it is unnecessary

Thanks to fading highlighting, I've been re-reading theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder's book, Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions.  I bought the book a few years ago and wrote several blog posts about it. (See here, here, here, here, and here.) Then I put the book aside and turned my attention to other books in my morning pre-meditation reading. When I picked it up again recently, I noticed that I hadn't read a couple of the final chapters. I also saw that my yellow highlighting had faded considerably. To most people, that wouldn't be a big deal. But…
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Posted inPsychedelics Spiritual practice/meditation

Lessons for meditation based on psychedelic experience research

As a long-time daily meditator -- I've been doing this for 55 years -- I found an article in the October 2024 issue of Scientific American interesting both for what it says about the use of psychedelics like LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin, and meditation that doesn't involve any psychoactive substance.  The title of the online version of the article by Gary Stix is provocative: "What Makes a Psychedelic Experience? Not Always a Drug, it Turns Out." I'll share a PDF file of the article for non-subscribers.Download What Makes a Psychedelic Experience? Not Always a Drug It Turns Out | Scientific…
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Posted inPolitics Reality

My cosmic conclusions from the 2024 presidential election

For some reason it's usually easier to draw Gigantic Cosmic Conclusions from big events rather than small ones. It doesn't have to be that way, though "gigantic" and "big" do have an affinity with each other.  Why does death or a disaster move us to ponder the meaning of it all more readily than loading the dishwasher does? If there are grand principles underlying our human experience of reality, why can't we recognize them in the smallest of events as well as the biggest of events? Don't know. Maybe because rare big events grab our attention while everyday small events…
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Posted inPolitics Reality

How am I coping with Trump’s victory over Harris? By embracing reality.

Reality is a terrible thing to waste. It's one of our most precious possessions. For when we depart from reality, truth obviously suffers. So does our ability to deal with problems, which to handle appropriately, almost always requires a healthy dose of reality. Problem is, and I struggle with this often, as almost everybody does, evolution didn't confer upon us the advantage of knowing the world as it is. Rather, evolution through natural selection promotes reproduction of our genes by living long enough to mate and have offspring.  Sure, that necessitates an ability to know how the world is, since…
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Posted inPolitics

With the election tomorrow, I’m trying to empathize with Trump supporters

Empathy. It's a fine-sounding word. I aspire to it. But it can be damn hard to do when people act like selfish jerks and I'm supposed to look upon their twisted view of reality with empathy.  That's how I feel about Trump supporters. They cheer on their chosen candidate, a twice-impeached former president, convicted felon, habitual liar, and instigator of a violent attempt to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election that was conducted freely and fairly, which Trump lost. Of course, that only scratches the surface of Trump's negative qualities and wrongdoing. Yet polls show that almost half…
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Posted inConsciousness Spiritual practice/meditation

If consciousness is immaterial, why does ultrasound boost mindfulness?

I realize that those who believe that consciousness is immaterial are pretty much immune to the evidence that it is a physical phenomenon.  That evidence is ubiquitous, as I've pointed out many times in blog posts. Anesthesia makes us unconscious. So does being hit on the head with a baseball bat. Caffeine makes consciousness more alert. MDMA ("Ecstasy") makes consciousness feel more loving.  The October 2024 issue of Scientific American has a short article that presents more evidence for the physical nature of consciousness. Being a daily meditator for most of my life -- I started meditating in 1969 --…
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Posted inPolitics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Gurus are like Trump: promising protection in return for absolute fealty

My wife found a Slate article by Steven Reisner on Apple News that she thought I'd be interested in, "The Deep Psychological Reason We're Stuck in This Feedback Loop With Donald Trump." Reisner starts off by saying: This is the third time Donald Trump has run for president as a major-party candidate, and yet, this cycle, the American electorate and the American press seem unable to fully comprehend the choice we are facing. It is not, as we’ve been trained to think, a contest between an extreme Republican and a middle-of-the-road Democrat. There is still no language that conveys what…
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Posted inGod Politics

A model isn’t reality, whether we’re talking politics or God

Since my mind is so focused on the presidential race here in the United States -- we're a week away from November 5, election day -- I figured I might as well go with the mental flow and write a post about a subject that is germane to both politics and God: modeling.  Not the sort of modeling where women or men put on designer clothes and strut down a walkway in front of an audience. The sort where a human understanding of some complex aspect of reality is fashioned into a model that attempts to reflect its nature. This…
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Posted inMindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Awareness is more important than peace of mind

Every day I repeat a brief loving kindness meditation. It starts with "May I be happy; may I be safe; may I be healthy; may I be at peace." Then I visualize someone I care about, usually my wife, and say the same things but substituting "you" for "I." After that, I zoom out to visualize the entire planet, and say "all" instead of "I." It's interesting that I have little trouble envisioning myself or someone else being happy, safe, and healthy. But while I enjoy the sentiment, "May ______ be at peace," it's more difficult for me to picture…
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Posted inScience Universe

The factual creation story of physics is more inspiring than religious fantasy

The world's major religions claim that God created our universe. Naturally details are lacking, because religions are all about faith, not facts.  Modern science also has its creation story, the Big Bang. It takes more effort to understand than the simplistic religious stories. But I find science's story to be much more appealing, largely because I prefer reality over fantasy when it comes to the big questions of life. (When it comes to thriller novels and television shows, I adore fantasy.) This isn't to say that the scientific explanation of creation is complete and coherent. It has a lot of…
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Posted inPolitics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Trump is a proven authoritarian fascist. Reminds me of some religious leaders.

Yesterday I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog, "Trump is a fascist, says his chief of staff, John Kelly." Here's part of a quotation from a New York Times story that I included in the post. In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online. “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

If God and the supernatural are real, where’s the evidence of them?

Religiously minded people like to have it both ways. I know whereof I speak, because I used to be one of those people before I saw the error of my ways.  The basic error is this: religious believers assert that (1) God and the supernatural can't be known through reason and the physical senses, yet (2) God and the supernatural are real, and deserve the respect shown to these divine realities. So those of us who reject blind faith are supposed to accept that one or many someones, somewhere, some time, had an experience of God and the supernatural that…
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Posted inReality Science

Science says the energy of matter is the energy of being

In my religious true-believing days, I would have made more of the scientific understanding shared in this blog post than what the understanding supports. Meaning, it isn't at all mystical, though it contains echoes of certain mystical teachings. Or more accurately, those teachings contain echoes of scientific truth. Today I got to the chapter in theoretical physicist Matt Strassler's book, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean, where he reveals the secret that he's been building up to in the part of the book that precedes the Quantum section.  I'm tempted to summarize what…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m learning some things by caring for my wife

As I said in my previous post, "My wife's shoulder surgery is a growth opportunity for me," since Laurel had shoulder replacement surgery last Tuesday, I've been her caregiver -- and will be for the 4-6 weeks she'll have to wear a sling on her right arm (we're hoping for four weeks). Until you can't use an arm for much, it's difficult to know all the things you won't be able to do anymore. We're rediscovering those things, since Laurel had rotator cuff surgery on the same arm about ten years ago that also required her to use a sling…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My wife’s shoulder surgery is a growth opportunity for me

For a long time I felt that my daily meditation was the best way for me to become a better person. Looking back, that was a selfish attitude. I'd bought into a form of pseudo-spirituality that taught self-realization (I'm soul, not body!) was the stepping stone to god-realization (My soul is a drop of the divine ocean!).  I call it "pseudo" because in my current frame of mind, genuine spirituality is about forgetting the self as much as possible, not trying to enhance it, even if the supposed enhancing is aimed at merging with the Grandest Self of All, god. …
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Why the mystical notion of a “sound current” is at odds with science

I used to belong to an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), whose teachings centered on the notion of shabd, or sound current -- considered to be the audible voice of God, being an all-pervading conscious energy that created and sustains the cosmos, including our physical universe. Believing in this, my first book was called God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder: Echoes of Ultimate Reality in the New Physics. (In the shorter and simpler version that I published after the original book went out of print, I changed the subtitle to Echoes of Spiritual Reality in the New Physics, which…
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