This week's issue of New Scientist has a special section on consciousness. Conscious being that I am, I enjoyed reading about whatever the heck my consciousness consists of. The articles contained a lot of interesting information. Much progress is being...
Until recently I'd never heard of Shahid Kapoor, a Bollywood actor in India. But it turns out that we have a connection: after reading my book, Life is Fair, Kapoor became a vegetarian. Here's the tale, as told in "The...
Here's a thought-provoking You Tube video: someone reading aloud Sam Harris' essay "The Fireplace Delusion." It's about how we can emotionally and intuitively enjoy something, while understanding reasonably and factually that this thing isn't good for us. We have a...
Sounds good to me, this Jootsing thing. Learned about it in Chapter 8 of Daniel Dennett's new book, "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking." Joots is a term coined by Douglas Hofstadter. It stands for "Jumping Out Of The...
Here's two email messages that I got from a woman who practices Kriya Yoga and has had some pretty amazing yogic experiences. Yet she considers that the experiences are entirely based on the body/brain. The book referred to in the...
We've all got problems. Some days it seems like life is nothing but one problem popping up after another. Car won't start. Forgot to pay credit card bill. Child came home with bad report card. Faucet has started leaking. Knee...
Whenever I go to Maui, I learn something. Not from a book, holy or otherwise. Not from a person, revered or otherwise. From experience. The best teacher. Usually from one of my favorite experiences, bodyboarding, which I'm only able to...
I love to get free books. One of the benefits of being an active churchless blogger is getting review copies of books in the "spiritual but not religious" genre. I'm about a third of the way through Galen Guengerich's "God...
Has God ever talked to you? Have you ever heard divine sounds, or seen divine visions? If so, you've got lots of company according to "Is That God Talking?" by T.M. Luhrmann, a professor of anthropology at Stanford. A questionnaire...
Recently I experienced an insignificant moment on an airplane which reminded me of how, when I was religious, experiences like this took on a wildly undeserved meaning. The flight attendants were coming down the aisle on their last beverage service...
Being an admirer of the American comedian Louis C.K., naturally I was attracted to the title of a Yoga Brains post I came across: "The Yoga of Louis C.K." It's worth a read. Excerpt: With that in mind, the below...
A while back I blogged about how I boxed up almost all of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) books that I'd accumulated over some thirty-five years. An Indian woman had contacted me, saying she was looking for older editions...
What are we? Ah, there's an ageless question. Matter? Energy? Mind? Spirit? Soul? A combination? As noted in a post from a few years back, "Feeling the spirit... via body or soul?," I used to believe that our true nature...
Someone sent me an email that says: A brief Message from Swami Abhayananda: I am making all my books, proems, and articles available for free download for the benefit of all interested spiritual seekers. To download any of the books,...
Fortunately, our house has a strong foundation. Even though my wife thinks I'm in danger of collapsing our home via the weight of all the books I bring into it, I'm confident that it will survive even after Daniel Dennett's...
Admirer of philosophical Taoism (especially Chuang Tzu) that I am, I enjoyed these reflections by Hakim Bey. Hope you do also. Aimless wanderers of the world, disunite! We never could get organized enough to agree on uniting, anyway. ---------------------------- Aimless...
David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher (1711-1776), is a favorite of modern day scientists and scientifically-minded philosophers. Somehow I'd reached the age of 64 without reading all of his "Concerning Human Understanding," even though my mother bought the Great...
It's late in the evening, and I don't have enough caffeine in my body to do writing-justice to the title of this post. So consider this a blog down payment on addressing a question that I've been pondering more and...
I enjoy getting comments on my blog posts. Many add informative extras to what I was writing about. But sometimes I read a comment that makes so little sense, my only reaction is a bewildered "huh?" Such as this one,...
Reportedly one of the Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan, the older brother, became much more fundamentalist in his Islamic beliefs before he and his younger brother killed and injured so many people. [Note: what follows is a great argument for encouraging...
It's simplistic to divide spiritually-inclined people into two types. But I love to do it! So I will! There, I embraced my wild horse nature. I thought of a rule that seemed to make sense. I considered throttling my inclination...
No, they're not. Not mine at least. That's what goes through my mind whenever I hear someone say, "Our thoughts and prayers are with you." Which has happened a lot after the bombing attack at the Boston Marathon. I can...
Here's a tip for authors of books in the spirituality, religion, mysticism, and meditation genres: If you want readers to finish your book, don't include a mention of another title like "Doing Nothing: Coming to the End of the Spritual...
There's little or no evidence of God or the supernatural. But there's increasing evidence that meditating and being mindful of the here and now can have positive effects. So my feeling is, why not start (and, likely, end) our spiritual...
I'm a churchless non-soul. I love reason, science, demonstrable proofs. Yet I enjoy practicing Tai Chi, with all its talk of qi, meridians, subtle energy flows, and such, most of which isn't within the realm of proven fact. No contradiction....
Back in my churched days, I believed that being spiritual meant going beyond the physical. So I meditated countless hours with eyes shut and ears closed off from the material world. In other words, the world. The only world. Many...
Like I said a few days ago, it's absolutely awesome that existence exists. Oh, guess I should add, "awesome, dude... ." Which reflects how marvelously meaningful what I said is. And also how meaningless. It happened again today. That sudden...
Roger Ebert died yesterday. When I heard the news, I was a lot sadder than I usually am when I learn someone famous has died. Ebert meant a lot to me, though I never saw him in person. He was...
It happened again today. That sudden "bottom falling out from under me" feeling, sort of the mental equivalent of being startled by an elevator going into free fall. I like the feeling. It's the most genuine sensation of spirituality, not...
Eben Alexander's book, "Proof of Heaven," is a best-seller. But that doesn't prove that heaven and God are real. Alexander has done a great job of cashing in on his claim that while in a coma, he had a vision...