Posted inDeath/Rebirth Science

The brain tricks us into believing something is real, when it is not

Ah, I love it when I see one of my thoughts reflected in someone else's brain. This helps me keep in mind that we humans are wonderfully alike, as well as wonderfully different.

I write a regular Strange Up Salem column in our town's alternative paper, Salem Weekly. (Feel free to give this effort to lift the blah-curse on my home town a Facebook like.)

Yes on 91 regulate it

With marijuana legalization on the ballot in Oregon, in the most recent issue my theme was "A Strange Reason to Legalize Marijuana." Here's how I started off the piece:

Here’s a news flash from the front page of modern neuroscience: “You don’t exist.” At least, not in the way most people believe they do.

We feel as if we look out upon the world as a detached ethereal consciousness floating behind our eyes, inside our head. We feel as if we’re a weightless self or soul inhabiting a body.

These feelings are wrong. The sense of self is an illusion. You, me, and everyone else are billions of neurons woven together via trillions of electrochemical connections.

Marvelously, the brain tells itself stories about how it is other than it is.

Then, not long after, I watched a new video by Andrea Diem-Lane and David Lane, "Near-Death Experiences: Neural Projections and Staying Alive." The first line of narration is…

The brain tricks us into believing something is real, when it is not, provided that such trickery gives it a survival advantage.

Absolutely! 

If I believe that I am a separate unique self, precious beyond compare, I'm going to fight harder to defend myself when attacked. Physically or psychologically, doesn't matter. Nobody messes with valuable Me.

Likewise, the short video convincingly argues that many (or most?) near-death experiences are the brain's way of telling itself, "Dude, life is really worth living. Fight to stay alive!"

The Lane's have a strong connection with India, so some of the examples are from that sub-continent. I liked how one woman devoted to her guru didn't see a vision of him when she nearly died, but rather was wowed by a Holy Chapati. 

It reminded her that she had cooking duties to attend to back on Earth.

Have a look.

 

I'll share my entire Strange Up Salem column as a continuation to this post.

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Posted inScience

A physicist talks about how likely supernaturalism is wrong

I like how physicist Lawrence Krauss speaks about "more likely" and "less likely" in a short video than "true" and "false."  Our knowledge about reality is on a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp dividing line. Rarely, if ever, can we say that this is absolutely 100% true, and that is absolutely 100% false.  Still, I don't totally understand Krauss' statement that "Science doesn't prove anything... science can only prove things to be wrong, not right... the Earth isn't flat, we can go around it, so that's wrong." This might have to do with one popular view of the scientific method,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Are you a spiritual wanderer, or traveler?

As I become more and more churchless, the notion of wandering seems more appealing than traveling. So I guess I could be called a spiritual wanderer, though I don't like the word "spiritual" any more. So even though I put it in the title of this post, let's drop it. I'm a wanderer, not a traveler.  Meaning, I used to believe in paths. For over thirty-five years I considered myself to be on a spiritual path. For most of that time I also thought I was on a career path. Ditto with a marriage and family path.  I liked the…
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Posted inBooks Science

“Self” is a confabulating part of the body

After buying the new book by noted biologist Edward O. Wilson, "The Meaning of Human Existence" (can't pass up a book with this title, so long as it isn't written by someone religious), I couldn't resist jumping this morning to the Free Will chapter.  The excerpts below, in bold, are some of the clearest writing about how the brain/mind works I've ever come across. And I've read a lot of books about modern neuroscience.  I've taken the liberty of commenting, in italics, on Wilson's words. Conscious mental life is built entirely from confabulation. Ooh, I love that word, confabulation: "to…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Without religion, no need to try to transcend the natural world

As I've observed before, for me churchlessness isn't an event but a process. Meaning, it isn't a sudden jump from being religious to being non-religious. It is a lengthy path with many twists and turns. I keep recognizing shadows of my former religiosity where, at first glance, I thought there was only secular light now. For example, I still have a tendency to believe in some transcendent truth. Not God. Not divinity. But a power or presence that stands apart from the natural world. This may sound religious, yet really it isn't. After all, Platonism and its philosophical offshoots consider…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris talks about mindfulness without religion

One great thing about being churchless is that you don't have to sit through long boring sermons. You can pick and choose your sources of inspiration and information.  Here's a recommendation. Watch a new 7-minute talk by Sam Harris, atheist author of "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion." (See my posts about this book, here, here, and here.)   Harris makes some great points about mindfulness and meditation. He says that religiosity, whether Buddhist or any other kind, shouldn't be mixed up with understanding how the mind works. Just as there is no Christian physics, just physics, neither…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

If I’m not the one inside my head, then who is?

I enjoy Zen. But I have no desire to actually practice Zen. Not formally. Too much work. Too much discipline. Too much bowing before a master who, you eventually realize, doesn't deserve veneration. I prefer the idea of being my own Zen teacher. That way, I can do as much Zen-stuff as I want, in the way I want to, when and how I want.  Which includes giving myself koans to solve. This is my new one: If I'm not the one inside my head, then who is? l really like this koan. I'm SO happy I thought of it.…
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Posted inReality

Embrace “Binocularity.” We are both subjective and objective.

In one of my periodic fits of grandiosity (assuming I'm ever doing anything else), last month I popped out a blog post titled, "Subjective and objective: the key to understanding everything!" However, even non-humble me understood that, duh, between the poles of subjective and objective must lie everything. What else is there in the cosmos that can't be classified as objectively or subjectively real?  Meaning, it either exists within, or as, some form of consciousness, or it is present whether or not some form of consciousness is aware of it.  Back in 2009 I swam in these deep philosophical waters…
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Posted inMiracles Universe

No, the universe didn’t “have a message for me”

Giving up religiosity doesn't happen all at once. At least, not in my case. I wasn't able to go cold turkey, so to speak, and give up my addiction to unfounded faith-based beliefs all at once. They just have gradually lessened, weakened, become much less powerful.  Yet in subtler forms, my previous attachment to feeling that I'm being watched over by an all-knowing, all-loving transcendental presence still is evident from time to time.  Like, last Thursday.  It was a potentially traumatic day for me. After having my hair cut by the same person for 37 years, Betsy departed for central Oregon. But she…
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Posted inScience

Why evolution makes it difficult for people to believe in evolution

Recently I've been blogging about Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up," whose central thesis is that our sense of being a Self or Soul separate and distinct from the brain/body is an illusion. Harris doesn't talk much, if at all, about how this sense came to be. It must have been an evolutionary advantage to early humans. Perhaps it is an add-on, so to speak, to our species' extraordinary ability to be not only aware, but self-aware. Aware of our awareness in a way that other animals aren't, the brain seems to look upon itself as if from the outside, fostering a…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Non-duality is simply this: observer and observed are one

There's a lot of stuff written and said about non-duality. I've both partaken of it and spewed out my own in various blog posts. For example, see here, here, here, and here. After reading a bunch of neuroscience books, Sam Harris' "Waking Up," and several books by Moller De La Rouviere, the simple truth of non-duality is finally sinking into my non-dual mind. Which, like yours, also has been, is now, and forever will be non-dual. Meaning, undivided into an observer and what is observed. Or awareness and objects of awareness. Or consciousness and contents of consciousness.  In short, there…
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Posted inReligions

In Kapparot, Jews transfer their sins to a chicken, then kill it. Weird!

Every religion is strange. Within every strange religion, some rituals and practices are even more strange. Such is the case with Kapporot (or Kaporos), a Jewish ritual of atonement. I hadn't heard about it until I got an email from someone affiliated with The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos. In part, she said: I am writing to ask that you cover this topic so that the cruel ritual of using chickens as Kaporos is brought to light and ended.  I have photos and video, and the founder of the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos is available for interview. …
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

I’ve finished Sam Harris’ “Waking Up.” Guess I have, sort of.

Well, Sam Harris' new book "Waking Up," a guide to spirituality without religion, was about what I expected. Interesting. Inspiring. Well written. Not hugely enlightening.  I've already blogged about some key themes in the book here and here. Like I said in the second post, there are subtleties in Harris' message that require some pondering -- as would be expected for such ponderable subjects as the nature of consciousness and the self. Having read a bunch of neuroscience books, I wasn't surprised by reading this. Once one recognizes the selflessness of consciousness, the practice of meditation becomes just a means…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Questions I had in Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” meditation chapter

Oh, Sam, you almost deeply disappointed me. But after a closer reading of the Meditation chapter in your new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion," I'm feeling better about your approach to understanding consciousness without mixing in religious crap. After writing two positive blog posts about the book, here and here, I was looking forward to reading the chapter on meditation this morning. Before I meditated, something I've been doing every day for about 45 years. As noted in my "Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self," this is an appealing notion -- or…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Real spirituality is realizing you aren’t a soul, or self

Just as predicted, I'm really enjoying reading Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion." I'm about a third of the way through. Which is far enough to have discovered the central theme. Harris writes: My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion -- and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment. ...Most of us feel that our experience of the world refers back to a self -- not to our bodies precisely but to a center of consciousness that…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” arrives tomorrow. Here’s a preview.

Oh, yeah, I'm ready for it! Bring it on, USPS or UPS, whichever Amazon has selected to deliver Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion."  Delivery day is tomorrow. Within a week I expect to be all woken up. Unless it takes longer, like ten days.  But seriously... I'm looking forward to this book, notwithstanding my previous doubting that I will indeed wake up as a result of sending $15.85 to Amazon. Even if I don't achieve a secular enlightened state (perhaps because I already am!), reading an interview with Harris in the New York…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritually speaking, do I think too much? Like, right now.

Thinking isn't viewed very highly by lots of spiritual (or pseudo-spiritual) folks. Especially those on the Eastern side of the religious divide: Buddhists, Advaitists, Neo-advaitists, Non-dualists, Taoists, and such. Of course, a lot of thoughts pass through their minds when they criticize thinking. (See here and here.) Likewise, I always smile when someone leaves a comment on one of my blog posts that says something like, "Brian, you've got to go beyond words," or "Brian, you need to love more and criticize less." Oh, I think, like you're not doing yourself, dude. Scientifically-minded guy that I am, I find it…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religion stifles innovation. Glad I live in Oregon.

Thanks to an email from a regular reader of this here Church of the Churchless, I learned about an interesting article in Mother Jones, "Study: Science and Religion Really Are Enemies After All." Are science and religion doomed to eternal "warfare," or can they just get along? Philosophers, theologians, scientists, and atheists debate this subject endlessly (and often, angrily). We hear a lot less from economists on the matter, however. But in a recent paper, Princeton economist Roland Bénabou and two colleagues unveiled a surprising finding that would at least appear to bolster the "conflict" camp: Both across countries and also…
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Posted inBooks Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

Religion’s false story about the “Great Other”

So here we are in this world, surrounded by the universe and an even greater cosmos beyond the limit of what can be observed in our corner of the space-time continuum. Understanding this is a life's work. Well, many lives. From the dawn of recorded history, and certainly well before that, humans have been extending the boundary of what is known. Of course, as physicist John Wheeler said, "As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." However, for various reasons religions, philosophies, spiritual belief systems, and mystical practices aren't willing to accept the mystery of…
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