Posted inChristianity/Jesus

I condemn myself to hell. For a free DVD.

I haven’t made my Blasphemy Challenge video yet, but here’s the written version: “Hi. I’m Brian. I deny the Holy Spirit.” According to Mark 3:29, my soul is now in deep hellish doo-doo. “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” On the plus side, if my video is among the first 1001 to be uploaded to YouTube, I’ll get a free DVD of The God Who Wasn’t There. That’s a $25 value, definitely enough for me to sell my soul. Actually, I’d condemn myself to hell for a lot less.…
8
Posted inReality

Reality is a terrible thing to waste (on religion)

I admire anyone who writes this boldly about believing in God: You believe in God. You also believe that we have a soul that lives eternally once our earthly bodies fail us. You believe that both of these statements are true. Now that we’ve agreed upon what you believe, let me tell you what I know. (Not what I believe to be true, but what I know to be true.) I know these statements you believe to be true are false. I know they are false because I know they are not true. That anyone is Jon, a Church of…
6
Posted inGod

Eliminate the middleman between you and God

It’s usually advisable to eliminate the middleman. He won’t like it. But if there’s no reason to keep him around, dump the guy. He adds extra overhead. Especially if he’s standing between you and God. Or more accurately, if you believe he is. For given that the evidence of God’s existence is extremely scanty, it figures that a belief in the need for a middleman or mediator between humanity and divinity rests on even shakier ground. Like, quicksand. I used to buy cars the old-fashioned way. And hated it. You know the routine. Find a car you like. Talk to…
11
Posted inVedanta/Advaita

Worship at your own doorstep

This morning, before meditating, I read some inspiring words from Vivekananda about strength. Our strength. Not God’s. Not a guru’s. Not anyone else’s. I decided to ask Google to tell me more about “Vivekananda” and “strength.” In the results I found myself. Thank you, Google. That’s exactly what I need to know. Or rather, remind myself of. These distant gods, these elevated theologies, these remote sages—increasingly they seem like comic book characters to me. Two dimensional, artificial, unnatural, fantastical. I may not have the answers to the big questions of life. I may be ignorant of what, if anything, lies…
5
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Thank you, Church of the Churchless visitors

It’s sort of clichéd for a blogger to devote his last post of the year to thanking his readers. But who’s afraid of a big bad cliché? Not me. I’m doing it anyway. Thank you. TypePad, my blog host, tells me that on average a few hundred people enter the cyberspacey Church of the Churchless door every day. I’m grateful. I talk to myself a lot of the time. That gets old. It’s nice to reach out and touch someone else, even if they’re repulsed by the gesture. Today I caught up on some unreplied emails and came across one…
6
Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Wu Project

When nothing is something: God

In my last post, I focused on a plagiarized passage that I found in a book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. What’s more interesting and significant than the plagiarism, though, is what this misquoted quotation from W.T. Stace points toward: Nothing. Which he, along with many other mystics and mystically inclined writers, equates with God. Even the plagiarist, J.R. Puri, seems to agree. For after he steals Stace’s words to speak of a state of pure consciousness that has no empirical content other than itself, consciousness aware of consciousness, Puri says: And this self-realization is often eventually spoken of…
5
Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas

J.R. Puri commits plagiarism in a RSSB book

The tables have been turned. David Lane (a.k.a. the Neural Surfer) has documented how Paul Twitchell , the founder of Eckankar, massively plagiarized from books published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (notably Julian Johnson’s “Path of the Masters”). But I've discovered that at least one Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) author is guilty of his own plagiarizing. A few days ago I was reading along in a book that I’d gotten myself for Christmas, “Meister Eckhart: Mystic as Theologian” by Robert K.C. Forman. On page 102 I came to a quotation from W.T. Stace. It seemed awfully familiar. Suppose that,…
31
Posted inChristianity/Jesus

“The Pagan Christ” looks at Christmas differently

Spoiler alert: if you’re a Christian who believes that today you celebrated the birth of someone who actually existed, stop reading--if you don’t want to run the risk of having your belief balloon punctured. Since I’ve never had any allegiance to the historical Jesus, I had no problem breezing through Tom Harpur’s eye-opening “The Pagan Christ,” subtitled “Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?” Harpur, a former Anglican priest and professor of Greek and New Testament at the University of Toronto, argues that Christianity is nothing more than warmed over Egyptian and Greek mythology. Jesus never existed as a historical personage. His…
7
Posted inPersonal/Stories

What makes for a nice day?

I ran into a platitude-buster at Salem’s LifeSource Natural Foods today. A new check-out girl started to ring up my items. She said, “Are you having a nice day?” I was familiar with grocery store etiquette, so responded with my expected line. “Yes, I am. Hope you are too.” That’s where the scripted exchange of pleasantries usually ends. But she surprised me. She stopped what she was doing, looked me in the eye, and asked, “What’s made it a nice day?” Nice! Yet also mildly anxiety-producing. I needed to come up with an answer. Pretty quick, since there were other…
3
Posted inChristianity/Jesus Religions

Almost time to celebrate the Christianity meme

Here we are, late December, and there sure is a lot of Christian talk going around. Someone from outer space would be asking, “What’s that all about?” Mangers, wise men, gifts of frankincense and myrrh. Our alien visitor would be told that Christmas is a celebration of a man who was sent by God to redeem the world’s sins; that he died, was resurrected, and now is able to give other people eternal life in heaven if you believe in him; and that he expects believers to praise his glory to others so that they too can be saved. “Oh,…
6
Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Abandon hope, all ye who seek

Let’s turn Dante on his head. Hope isn’t abandoned at the entrance to hell, but at the entrance to paradise. I’m temped to say that I hope to convince you of this. Don’t want to descend into hell, though. Hope has been much on my mind lately. Two climbers are still missing on Mt. Hood, fairly near to where I live. Today on cable news I heard more expressions of hope that they’ll be found alive, even though it’s increasingly likely that they won’t. I’ve been trying to understand what grates on me every time somebody intones the platitude, “We’ve…
12
Posted inReality

Hope is the present moment

I live just sixty miles or so from Mt. Hood, where two climbers are still missing on the mountain and one has been found. Dead. Both local and national news is focused on this drama. I am too. This afternoon I was zeroed in on a television tuned to CNN while exercising on a stairmaster at my athletic club. There was lots of talk about hope. A snow cave had been discovered. Rescuers were making their way to it. Driving home, I heard on the radio that a body had been recovered. Yet hope was still being expressed that the…
5
Posted inGod

Prayer can be criticized

For me prayer represents what is both wrong and right about religion. Wrong, because prayer is the epitome of blind faith, religion’s hallmark. Believers imagine they’re communicating with someone they’ve never seen and for whom there’s no evidence of his/her/its existence. Right, because prayer is a natural human response to feeling powerless, uncertain, afraid, alone, loveless, or some other emotion flowing from an unmet need demanding satisfaction. Spinoza said that God’s will is “the asylum of ignorance.” When we don’t understand why something happened in the past, or what the future will bring, the anxiety of not knowing or not…
5
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A memory of Roland DeVries, the man who churched me

I heard from a friend that Roland DeVries died last Saturday, supposedly at 4:00 am when he got up to meditate. If so, I’m happy for Roland. Nice way to go. Roland is the reason I’m now churchless. For he got me churched back in 1971 when he initiated me into Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a branch of Sant Mat. If I’d never been a true believer, I wouldn’t have been able to evolve into an I’ll believe when I’ve got proof’er. Roland is a good example of how respect and affection for a person can (and should) be…
8
Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Don’t spam God

It’s rare that I resonate with a Christian message. But I like the general tone of this short “Do you spam God?” piece (a PDF file). I wonder, though, whether maybe God would prefer not to be bothered at all, compared with getting heartfelt messages. What’s the point of blabbing away to an omniscient omnipresent being? (Thanks to the New Life Church for sharing this link).
3
Posted inMystics Spiritual practice/meditation

Keeping consciousness simple

It’s astounding, really. We all confidently say, “I think…,” “I believe…,” “I feel…,” “I see….” Yet we don’t know who or what the “I” is. So how confident should we be about all those statements we make, to others and to our own self, when the nature of the statement-making entity is a mystery? Last night I managed to watch about fifteen minutes of an interview with Deepak Chopra before this I-entity overdosed on New Age gobbledygook. Nonetheless, I did appreciate how Chopra focuses on unraveling the essence of consciousness. He believes that consciousness is foundational in the cosmos—a reversal…
12
Posted inWu Project

Wu is the way

Yesterday Laurel and I enjoyed a pleasant coffee house conversation with David, a fellow churchless Salem resident who happened upon this blog. He emailed me a while back and we finally got together to chat about matters both mystical and material. During deep “what’s it all about” talks like the one we had, I find it as interesting to hear what comes out of my mouth as what others have to say. Sometimes I spout out sentiments that surprise me, because if someone else were to utter them, I’d be inclined to think claptrap. For example, I told David and…
5
Posted inReality

The changing face of faith

Got to get psyched up, so to speak, for another Internet radio interview tonight with mediums Marcel and Lenny. Tune in your computer at 8 pm PST here for a discussion of “The Changing Face of Faith.” Here’s the blurb that got emailed to me. Download in_good_spirit_12606.doc I’ll jump on their medium turf and look into the future: Marcel and Lenny will challenge my spiritual skepticism. And I’ll say, “But skepticism is the doorway to openness.” Or something like that. Maybe I’ll talk about walking up our driveway to get the newspaper in the morning. A few days ago I…
5
Posted inMiscellaneous

Marcel the medium takes on Julia the atheist

Ever eager to help publicize my favorite Hollywood medium, Marcel Cairo, I invite you to peruse his Celebrity News Alert that got emailed to me recently. Download marcels_celebrity_news_alert.doc Marcel is engaged in some bloggish back and forth with Julia Sweeney, Saturday Night Live alum, who has morphed into an articulate unbeliever, as I wrote about in “Letting go of God. And Uncle Fred.” In this post on Sweeney’s blog she exhibits some skepticism toward mediums like Marcel. Well, a bit more than “some.” You say you believe in the afterlife BECAUSE you are a spiritual medium. What does that mean,…
16
Posted inReligions

Sam Harris makes “The Case Against Faith”

It’s always a delight to read Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. He’s got a knack for speaking honestly about subjects that often are taboo topics in polite conversation. Like, “Why do you cling to such weird religious beliefs?” In a November 13, 2006 Newsweek essay, “The Case Against Faith,” Harris socks it to the faithful in six paragraphs that had me cheering from my seat in the churchless bleachers. After lamenting that more than half of Americans believe the entire cosmos was created 6,000 years ago, he says: This is embarrassing.…
14