Posted inNeuroscience

Manifesting makes sense, when it’s looked at scientifically

Last year I wrote a couple of blog posts about the scientific approach to manifesting: Mind Magic is a science-based book about manifesting what you want, and Manifesting comes in two varieties: scientific and New Age. I've just started reading another scientific book about manifesting. The author is a psychologist, Sabina Brennan, who wrote The Neuroscience of Manifesting. It'll probably cover much the same ground as Mind Magic, but the Introduction has an interesting perspective on the magical aspect of manifesting. Recently in a comment I mentioned how our conscious mind is just the tip of the mental iceberg, since…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Anyone know how to contact Gurinder Singh, the RSSB guru?

I just received this message from someone who wants very much to get in touch with Gurinder Singh, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization. I told this person that I didn't have the guru's contact information, but I could ask on my blog if anyone else does. The person said I should do this. "Babaji" refers to Gurinder Singh. Use the Contact form at the top of the page to reach me if you have a way to reach Gurinder Singh, and I'll pass that information on to the person. Hi Brian, I’m from India…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

For me, the genuine spiritual path leads from religious fantasy to everyday reality

Recently I heard from someone who currently is a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years. This person described both what bothers them about their experience as a RSSB initiate, and also what they enjoy about their experience. Their message ended with what perhaps is the most important thing they said, at least to my eyes. Sant Mat is the philosophy underlying the RSSB teachings. Thanks for having the courage to set up the site and make your views known. I hope to be…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience Uncategorized

The motive of Charlie Kirk’s killer will never be known, because free will is an illusion

Here at the Church of the Churchless we examine issues related to current events that are almost universally ignored by others. Some would say that's because I write about stuff that is so far out-there, so metaphysical, so divorced from everyday reality, nobody cares about it except people who similarly have their heads in the clouds instead of grounded in practicality. Not surprisingly, I have a different take. Ever since Charlie Kirk, a well-known right-wing political activist here in the United States, was apparently killed by Tyler Robinson, who has been arrested, I've heard many commentators on news outlets speak…
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Posted inIndia Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Flooding along India’s Beas River likely made worse by Radha Soami Satsang Beas

A few days ago I got a message, shared below, from someone about flooding caused by a religious organization. The Dera, in India's Punjab, is the headquarters of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious group that I was an active member of for 35 years, and have written about quite a bit on this blog. Gurinder Singh Dhillon has been the RSSB guru since 1990 and now is sharing guru duties with another man, to my understanding. Hi Mr Hines, Greetings. As you know Punjab in India is devastated by floods. Though Dera chief Mr Dhillon is trying to…
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Posted inComments Personal/Stories Politics

Open respectful discussion of controversial issues is what the world needs now

Today, the first day that I've started posting on this WordPress version of Church of the Churchless after 21 years of blogging on the Typepad platform that is shutting down on September 30, a well-known 31 year old advocate of Republican and conservative policies, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated while speaking at a college in Utah. His death has thrown the United States into turmoil. We've had too many recent instances of politicians and political leaders on both the left and right killed in the name of some sort of twisted ideology. Or sometimes, for no discernible reason at all. Somehow,…
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Posted inKarma Neuroscience

Best to avoid magical thinking, even if you like magic

NOTE: I just checked, and it appears that the new WordPress version of my Salem Political Snark blog has gone live, thanks to the fine work by Glorywebs, the tech company that is handling the migration of my blogs to WordPress, since Typepad, my current blogging service, is shutting down on September 30. I've asked that Church of the Churchless be the next blog that they work on. If you want to see what this blog will look like fairly soon, check out the new and much improved Salem Political Snark. You click on the title of a post to…
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Posted inBuddhism Neuroscience

“Myself” is a transient thought, like all other thoughts

Who am I? Who are you? Who is anybody? These questions, which all point in the same enigmatic direction, are central to many different fields. Psychology. Neuroscience. Spirituality. Philosophy. Sociology. Anthropology. Broadly speaking -- very broadly, really -- there seems to be two approaches to answering the Who am I? question. I'll sum them up as the Hidden Pearl and the Flowing River. Hinduism is an example of Hidden Pearl. There's a divine Self lurking within the human psyche, Atman, which, when recognized, is closely related to Brahman, the Supreme Being. Another way of putting it is the true Self…
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Posted inReality

While I’m glad this blog doesn’t have a fact-checker, the job is a vital one

Facts. The word is so appealing. Who doesn't love facts? Well, actually lots of people these days, notably including the president of the United States, plenty of politicians, and conspiracy theorists. I'd add religious believers, but I'm not sure how much we should expect from a religion when it comes to facts. After all, faith in things unseen is a hallmark of religiosity. It's impossible to fact check what can't be observed in any fashion. The check, though, can reveal an absence of a fact, not its wrongness. Still, I do my best to keep my blog posts as accurate…
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Posted inMiscellaneous Personal/Stories

Typepad is leaving me, but I’m not leaving you

Last Wednesday, August 27, Typepad -- my blogging platform -- announced that it was shutting down as of September 30. When I saw the email from Typepad I was shocked, though by no means totally surprised. For quite a while, rumors have been circulating of Typepad's demise. Last March I asked Typepad support if the rumors were accurate, as described in "Typepad told me they aren't going out of business. Hope that's true." Well, it wasn't true. Worse, Typepad only gave its remaining users (new customers haven't been accepted for several years) a bit more than a month to migrate…
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Posted inAwareness Meaning of life Spiritual practice/meditation

Forget what some “saint” says about life and make your own way

In my previous two posts, I've shared quotations from Robert Saltzman's book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning. In this post I'm going to shift gears slightly and share some quotes from Saltzman's first book, The Ten Thousand Things, which is in the form of questions and answers. I ordered this book after reading some Amazon comments on The 21st Century Self that suggested starting with The Ten Thousand Things as it was a better overall description of how Saltzman sees things.  I'm liking it, just as I like his most recent book. As noted before, Saltzman says things that…
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Posted inAwareness Spiritual practice/meditation

Seeing nothing in the mirror of the self, we get a hint of who we are

At the end of my previous post in which I shared a lengthy quotation from Robert Saltzman's book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning, I said "The Mirror chapter goes on. But I'll share that going-on another day." This is that day. I loved this chapter. Saltzman doesn't really say anything that I haven't heard before from other writers who also challenge the usual approach to spirituality, but he has a knack for speaking in a way that I find highly appealing. Enjoy. You might want to read that previous post first, which comprised the…
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Posted inAwareness Spiritual practice/meditation

In mirroring ourselves, we lose naturalness in the name of spirituality

Today I read a chapter in Robert Saltzman's book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning, that ended up so filled with highlighting of passages that I admired, the chapter only had a few unhighlighted areas. That's how much I liked "The Mirror." It addressed a question that has been in the back of my mind (and sometimes in the front of my mind) since I embarked on a spiritual-but-not-religious path some twenty years ago after giving up an Eastern form of dogmatic religiosity. What I've been wondering is whether there's something seriously wrong with my…
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Posted inHappiness Meaning of life Neuroscience

Happiness and meaning can trap us. Psychological richness, not so much.

A few days ago I wrote my first post about Shigehiro Oishi's book, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. For a thoughtful review of the book by Sebastiano Mancin, click here. Here's a second post about Oishi's call for adding psychological richness to the commonly heard dimensions of a full life, happiness and meaning. He argues that while we all crave happiness, this longing can be a trap. The happiness trap has two faces. First, there is the pressure to be happy, which makes feeling sadness, anger, and anguish seem undesirable and…
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Posted inHappiness Meaning of life

In addition to happiness and meaning, there’s psychological richness

I got excited when I heard about Shigehiro Oishi's book, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. I can't remember how I learned about the book. I just recall ordering it from Amazon almost instantly. Though I just got the book, and have only been able to read a couple of chapters so far, my excitement at learning about a third dimension to life in addition to happiness and meaning seems to show that I'm prone to psychological richness.  This chart included in a Psychology Today article, "How to Live a Psychologically Rich…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Just breath. Arising out of nothing. Returning to nothing.

Most religions say that the purpose of human life is to merge with God. Maybe not become God, but at least become really close to God. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism obviously differ in many respects. However, they all espouse achieving a closeness to the Almighty that expands the usual conception of what being a person is all about. The Eastern religion that I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, had a similar teaching: the creative power of God extends throughout the creation. Through meditation and other spiritual practices, it is possible to first become self-realized as…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

If a religion claims to know ultimate truth, how can its teachings change?

This morning I read another chapter in Scott Carney's The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond  Mountain. "Diamond Theosophy" included some interesting Buddhist history that I wasn't aware of before. I did know that Buddhism became less popular in the area where Buddha lived, modern day India. China and Japan became Buddhist centers, along with south Asia. But Buddhism also made its way into Tibet in the fifth century, where it thrived.  Carney writes: Modern scholars who have studied the original manuscripts were unsurprised to learn that the translations that endured the legions of miles on monks' backs…
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Posted inMeaning of life Morality

Two deeply flawed heads of state on a red carpet. Truly, life lacks inherent meaning.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Philosophical Jury. Regarding the question of whether there is meaning, morality, and justice inherent in life, I present into evidence this photograph of two men walking on a red carpet prior to their meeting yesterday in Anchorage, Alaska, where they discussed how to end the war in Ukraine. There are those who argue that life is fair, that we get what we deserve, that what goes around comes around. I beg to differ. For the man on the right is Vladimir Putin, Russia's dictator, though his official title is something less honest. Putin kills his…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Karma makes sense. Except when it doesn’t. Same with trusting a spiritual teacher.

I'm gradually making my way through Scott Carney's The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond  Mountain. (First blog post about the book is here.) The book is building up its tale of Buddhism gone bad by telling us about the history of the Buddhist student who dies and the Buddhist teacher who, I'm assuming, played a role in his death. Along the way, Carney describes what Buddhism is all about. This is mostly familiar territory for me. But since I'm much more interested in the modern secular non-supernatural side of Buddhism than the traditional religious supernatural side, some…
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Posted inNeuroscience Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Perfectionism is loved by religions, but it’s bad for us

There's nothing wrong with aspiring to be perfect. That's how athletes improve at their sport. That's how scientists improve at their research. That's how ordinary people improve at their relationships. But there's a danger lurking in this aspiration: perfectionism. That's a serious psychological malady. It manifests when we are overly attached to the lure of being perfect, lacking the ability to understand that failure and flaws are what make us human. The August 8, 2025 issue of The New Yorker has an article by Leslie Jamison, "The Pain of Perfectionism." It spoke to me because, like most people, I go…
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