Michael S. -- your book?

[Guest guest]

Here's a bit from a draft proposal for literary agents:

 

You can put together a long list of books in the current

science-religion debate, but almost every one of them follows the same

procedure. All of the writers think of religions as bundles of ideas and

statements of fact, or as systems that aim at producing these. This may

very well be because they're writing in a culture that's Christian or,

at most, merely post-Christian. When we think of religion in North

America or Europe it's hard not to think of Christianity, and

Christianity is very much a religion about ideas and statements of fact.

That's a bonanza if you're interested in writing a polemic, but a real

problem if you want to talk about religion in general.

 

The problem with Christianity is that it's different from just about

every other religious tradition we know of. Go into a Hindu temple and

look at all the gods, and if your starting point in Christianity you'll

probably conclude that Hindus believe facts about Shiva and Krishna and

how Brahma created the world in pretty much the way that most Southern

Baptists believe the details in the gospels and the creation story in

Genesis. They don't. Hindu gods don't represent ultimate reality; the

tradition insists that we can't have /any /accurate/ /ideas about

reality itself. Hinduism is about its practices, not ideas, and its

point is to change the way we experience the world instead of imparting

information about it. The gods and the stories are there to guide the

trip, but they're not the destination. The practices aim at

self-transformation, not pie in the sky in the company of one's favorite

deity.

 

There are similar religious traditions all over the world--in Africa,

Australia, the Americas, and Asia. If we're going to talk about

religion, pure and simple, we need to avoid saying “religion” and

thinking “Christianity.” We need to look behind the stories and images

to the world that emerges through the practice.

 

Devotees insist that their practice grants them moments in which they

feel themselves to be unbounded, free and spontaneously responsive to

everything else, at the margins of a different and better world where

they are intimately known and loved. The world of that experience feels

far more real than our own; everyday life looks like a shoddy

fabrication. Only joy, love, and grace are true.

 

Surprisingly, there are good scientific reasons to agree with them. The

biological reality is that we are indeed unbounded, spontaneous, and

intimately tied with all beings. We aren't the separate, self-seeking

units that we look like in self-consciousness, always theorizing or

concocting stories. Instead, feeling decides, and it decides with a body

that resonates with the actions, intentions, and emotional states of

those around us. What others do and feel is echoed in our own brain—the

same “mirror neurons” fire in both viewer and actor. The world is within

us--the free play of an endless subconscious collaboration.

 

The self of introspection doesn't reflect what we really are; in fact,

it conceals this reality. It is a fragment that pushes the real activity

of living off into a place that can only be sensed when meditation,

trance, dance, or song persuades it to fall silent. Religious life grows

out of the insight that we and our world are not how we experience them,

and religious practices gather up our knowledge of how we might approach

the reality that self-consciousness hides.

 

msbauju wrote:

>

> Could you tell me a little bit more

> about your in-progress book?

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Best wishes on your book project.

Keep us posted!

 

, Michael Steinberg <mlstein wrote:

>

> Here's a bit from a draft proposal for literary agents:

>

> You can put together a long list of books in the current

> science-religion debate, but almost every one of them follows the same

> procedure. All of the writers think of religions as bundles of ideas and

> statements of fact, or as systems that aim at producing these. This may

> very well be because they're writing in a culture that's Christian or,

> at most, merely post-Christian. When we think of religion in North

> America or Europe it's hard not to think of Christianity, and

> Christianity is very much a religion about ideas and statements of fact.

> That's a bonanza if you're interested in writing a polemic, but a real

> problem if you want to talk about religion in general.

>

> The problem with Christianity is that it's different from just about

> every other religious tradition we know of. Go into a Hindu temple and

> look at all the gods, and if your starting point in Christianity you'll

> probably conclude that Hindus believe facts about Shiva and Krishna and

> how Brahma created the world in pretty much the way that most Southern

> Baptists believe the details in the gospels and the creation story in

> Genesis. They don't. Hindu gods don't represent ultimate reality; the

> tradition insists that we can't have /any /accurate/ /ideas about

> reality itself. Hinduism is about its practices, not ideas, and its

> point is to change the way we experience the world instead of imparting

> information about it. The gods and the stories are there to guide the

> trip, but they're not the destination. The practices aim at

> self-transformation, not pie in the sky in the company of one's favorite

> deity.

>

> There are similar religious traditions all over the world--in Africa,

> Australia, the Americas, and Asia. If we're going to talk about

> religion, pure and simple, we need to avoid saying " religion " and

> thinking " Christianity. " We need to look behind the stories and images

> to the world that emerges through the practice.

>

> Devotees insist that their practice grants them moments in which they

> feel themselves to be unbounded, free and spontaneously responsive to

> everything else, at the margins of a different and better world where

> they are intimately known and loved. The world of that experience feels

> far more real than our own; everyday life looks like a shoddy

> fabrication. Only joy, love, and grace are true.

>

> Surprisingly, there are good scientific reasons to agree with them. The

> biological reality is that we are indeed unbounded, spontaneous, and

> intimately tied with all beings. We aren't the separate, self-seeking

> units that we look like in self-consciousness, always theorizing or

> concocting stories. Instead, feeling decides, and it decides with a body

> that resonates with the actions, intentions, and emotional states of

> those around us. What others do and feel is echoed in our own brain—the

> same " mirror neurons " fire in both viewer and actor. The world is within

> us--the free play of an endless subconscious collaboration.

>

> The self of introspection doesn't reflect what we really are; in fact,

> it conceals this reality. It is a fragment that pushes the real activity

> of living off into a place that can only be sensed when meditation,

> trance, dance, or song persuades it to fall silent. Religious life grows

> out of the insight that we and our world are not how we experience them,

> and religious practices gather up our knowledge of how we might approach

> the reality that self-consciousness hides.

>

> msbauju wrote:

> >

> > Could you tell me a little bit more

> > about your in-progress book?

> >

> >

> >

>

[Guest guest]

måndagen den 9 mars 2009 skrev Michael Steinberg:

 

> Surprisingly, there are good scientific reasons to agree with them. The

> biological reality is that we are indeed unbounded, spontaneous, and

> intimately tied with all beings.

 

Thank you for your thoughts. I just want to comment that here you stumble into

western christian thinking, when you refer to scientific biological reality,

as if that scientific thinking would be superior to other ideas. Indian

thinking is often about how we are not these biological (western scientific)

reality, but free spirit beyond it. Spiritual thinking is often not

thinking " I am a biological entity, that is now thinking his and that, and

now I feel this and that " , but " I am spirit beyond this biological reality,

and I want to transcend it to experience my real existence " .

 

I know that those fixed in western thinking think that experiences of

spiritual ecstasy is just some chemical reaction of the brain, and the

feeling of being spirit beyond this world is just a kind of self delusion.

But is it really? Is western science more true than our own experience? What

is i that says that the spiritual experience is not real? Actually, hindu

thought say that is it real, and the outside external world is what is

unreal.

 

In the world of unreality, western christian scientific through certainly have

its merits, but within the inner reality, it does not hold true anymore.

Unfortunately, to experience this inner reality, can be so hard, so that it is

almost unattainable. And therefore those who are learned in the outside

world, might say - bah, it does no exist.

 

Brahman certainly includes even the external world, but it is called illusory.

It is how it appears, but is not what it is. It is an image, but not its true

nature. And as such, western science, is the science of that illusion, not of

reality. To understand real reality, understand brahman, we have to go beyond

its external illusion, go inside. As we are part of brahman, part of reality,

we can experience that within ourselves. That's the quest of the sadhu.

 

-- Prisni

[Guest guest]

Thanks, Prisni, for a thought-provoking comment. You're absolutely

right--what we call science is just a way of explaining experiences in

terms of other experiences. It can't ever get us to what's ultimately

real. This is an argument that has a long Western lineage, too, starting

with Kant.

 

But please remember that this has a context. What I wrote was a

prospectus for a popular book on the science/religion debate. I can't

very well start off by telling my readers that science is pointless;

they'd close the book right there and put it back on the shelf. You've

got to begin where people are and talk to them in the language they

understand. That means paying science a lot of respect, and then (I

hope) bringing my audience to see that it points at something which we

can't deal with scientifically. Then they might be open to understanding

that practices like those in Hinduism actually place us closer to the

heart of that unknowable reality.

 

Besides, the way I understand my tradition is that the phenomenal world

isn't maya in the sense of an hallucination. It's maya in the sense that

it's not ultimately real or self-subsistent. Yet it's not ultimately

unreal either, because the phenomenal world is the devi's own

self-manifestation. She is both maya and release from maya, after all.

So science in the sense of close attentiveness to the structures and

dynamics of the phenomenal world is not just spinning our wheels. It's

also watching for glimpses of her at work--or play. As I argue in my

book, once we understand that even the amoeba is a complex, intentional,

and knowledgeable organism, we can begin to see ourselves as something

other than fleshy robots run by computer-like brains. That's a big step

towards the insight that we aren't isolated units but instances of

something vastly larger which is imbued at every level with knowledge

and purpose.

 

It's also--I hope--a way around the opposition you've posited between

biological experience and spiritual experience. If I were a dualist that

opposition would make sense. Mine is an advaita tradition, though, and

to me this means that what we call biological reality with its bodily

experience is the same thing that in another perspective is spiritual

reality with its spiritual experience. I'm not trying to reduce one to

the other. I don't for a moment think that spiritual ecstasy is some

chemical reaction in the brain. (By the way, I don't think that's true

of what I'm doing right now; check out Alva Noe's " Out of our heads: Why

you are not your brain " , for example.) I don't think it's an illusion

either. I think it's a real experience of our real nature, which doesn't

at all resemble the fictitious ego sitting in the skull looking out at

the physical world. As the experience of a self-conscious entity,

however, it has to shine in and through our bodies.

 

But keep questioning me if you want--it helps me think more clearly!

 

Michael Steinberg