LSP26: Materialism, Buddhism, and Karma

Sometime in the 6th century BCE, in a region now known as Nepal, a man was born who is credited as being the Awakened One. Siddhartha Gautama -- known to us as the Buddha -- crafted an entirely new philosophical system in response to the problems he saw in Hinduism (as it existed then). His teachings are currently of great interest to spiritual seekers in the West who are tired of the turmoil created by our cultural norms.

From the earliest years of the movement, the Buddha's core teachings looked very different on the surface compared to Hinduism's ritual-bound, authoritarian teachings. Therein lay Buddhism's appeal. Unlike the highly supernatural Hindu teachings, the earliest Buddhist teachings were empirical, scientific, pragmatic, therapeutic, psychological, egalitarian, and directed to individuals.* The Buddha's original religion (or way of life) was therefore long on intense self-effort, short on metaphysical speculation, devoid of authority, devoid of ritual, devoid of tradition, and devoid of the supernatural.**

Unfortunately, because the Buddha continued to uphold the laws of Karma -- not only using Karma as the main root system for his philosophy but pushing the logical implications of Karma to their ultimate purified form -- the religion he founded is also devoid of relationship with God.

Technically, Buddhism is referred to as a non-theistic religion or philosophy because there's no room in it for a personal God. This isn't to say that God doesn't exist -- just that a personal God isn't needed. Or wanted.

This is a strong statement, so before I say anything else, I want to emphasize that my comments in this post refer only of those narcissistic individuals (some of whom I've had heartbreaking dealings with) who use the core teachings of Buddhism for their own selfish purposes and gain. Most Buddhists, I'm sure, try not to misuse the teachings -- just as most Pauline Christians try to rise above the low bar set by the Church for their personal conduct.

The Buddha's earliest teachings are intensely transpersonal -- trancending the self -- in the way that all apophatic teachings strive for. A personal God is discarded and replaced with the numinous cloud of Knowing/Unknowing that many people now call Source or Godhead. It's this unknowable cloud of universal law that lies behind the theories of Karma in the East and Gnosis in the West.

As with all major world religions, Buddhism isn't a single religious entity, but is instead an umbrella term for various schools and branches that have diverged from the earliest teachings. A common belief in the doctrine of Karma is one of the uniting threads among diverse forms of Buddhism. This statue fragment of the Buddha is from the Gandharan art collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2017.

According to Karma's teachers, the cloud's Materialist laws of cause and effect (i.e. Karma) are THE laws you must obey. There's no way around the absolutism of the consequences you bear for your choices. Although it's daunting to be stuck with these laws, the good news is this: whoever who can read the cosmic laws encoded in the cloud acquires great power -- infinite power, actually. Whoever who reads the cosmic laws and controls them no longer needs a relationship with God because he or she has, in a sense, become God.

In other words, once you have law, who needs love?

And who needs forgiveness and humbleness? The laws of Karma, which purport to originate in a universe of pure morality, haven't the teeniest tiniest crack within them for the seeds of Divine Forgiveness. This point alone demonstrates the stark contrast between the Buddha's teachings and Jesus' teachings.

Bear in mind an important point here, a point which is often overlooked: it's the people who claim to have achieved nirvana who get to tell the rest of us what the Karmic laws are. It's the normal, regular, everyday people -- not the universe or the planet or the laws of non-Materialist science or the laws of neuroscience -- who are dictating the meaning of universal justice. It's the ones who obey the traditions of their lineage who don't have to explain themselves. We're simply expected to trust that anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering), and anatta (absence of a permanent personality or soul) tell us everything we need to know about life on Planet Earth -- because the Buddhist philosophers have told us so. (When they see this pattern of top-down authority in Christianity, we call it revelation.)

In its purest, earliest form, the teachings of Buddhism are no different than the teachings of other apophatic mystical traditions that seek to depose God as a person (actually, two people) and elevate the human mind to a position of authority it doesn't deserve.

Ironic, yes?


* Huston Smith, The World's Religions (New York: HarperCollins, 1958 and 1991), page 98.
** Huston Smith, The World's Religions, pages 94-97.


For Further Reflection:

Sometimes, when we've been born and raised with certain beliefs about how the Universe works, we discover it's no easy thing to set aside those beliefs even when we're sure they're wrong.

A few researchers in recent years have been looking for evidence in the human brain for "the God Spot" or "the God Code" to explain why most people seem to want and need religion in their lives. Some researchers have noticed there's a sort of "God-shaped conceptual space" in the brain that tends to fill up with non-Materialist beliefs. But it's really more complicated than this. From the moment of birth, the biological brain starts looking for evidence of two things: (1) how the 3D Universe works and (2) how the self fits into this strange new 3D Universe.

Bear in mind that, for the soul, the 3D Universe of baryonic matter (i.e. atoms and molecules that respond to the laws of classical physics) are not the norm. Souls (angelic consciousnesses) are born into the non-baryonic quantum world that governs 95% of all energy in Creation, a world where Divine Love and Divine Forgiveness and non-locality and quantum weirdness are normal parts of everyday life. Souls are used to weirdness. So when we choose to incarnate, we hit the ground running (so to speak) as we try to take in all the sights and sounds and gravitational laws that apply to 3D life on Planet Earth.

In our early years, we rely heavily on our own built-in observational skills as little scientists-in-human-form. We're constantly exploring the laws of classical physics, testing and retesting (yes, the peas still fall when I threw them!), and filling up our brains with all sorts of important data sets. Soon we start to ask more advanced questions about the laws of classical physics, and at this point we turn to the wisdom of the adults around us. We absorb what they tell us about how the Universe works. We also absorb what they indirectly imply through their own choices and their own responses to the world around them. We use the wisdom of adults as a sort of macro to filter and sort our understanding about the laws of the Universe. And this is a sensible thing for us to do because there's so much to learn and process.

When the adults around us live and breathe a highly specific cosmogony -- for example, Young Earth Creationism in Christianity, or Karma in Buddhism -- our growing brains start to accept this cosmogony not as a working theory but as an actual scientific truth. Based on our acceptance of cosmogony as truth, we then build an internal moral code that's consistent with our cosmogony. We do this because we want our inner selves -- our inner laws and choices -- to be in harmony with the laws we believe govern all Creation. This is the only approach to life that makes sense, because even when we're very young, we sense that we're not alone in Creation, that our lives are fully interdependent with the forces that govern all Creation. So we want to flow with the forces as we understand them, not against them.

You can imagine, therefore, how the biological brain will shape itself in childhood and early adulthood if the laws of Karma are upheld as scientific truth (even though in actuality the laws of Karma are pure conjecture). Planet Earth will, of necessity, look like a very grim place to you, and your lot in life will seem like a scientific reality that you must deserve and can't do anything about unless you commit to the path of letting go of the one thing that's truly yours: yourself.

The System 2 networks of the brain, scarily enough, see the logic in this path. But the System 1 networks, which hold within them the seeds for the path of love and forgiveness and meaning and empathy and relationship with God, will fight and fight against this ghastly "truth" until their biological networks are finally broken apart through constant suppression and denial.

Eventually, the brain's networks, so overgrown with the tenacious kudzu-like roots of Karma, can only see the world as proof of the theory itself. It's a vicious cycle, one that reinforces the theory of cyclical time and further damages the brain's ability to objectively assess religious doctrines.

One final note: You might think that a theory that's been around for a long time is surely correct simply because of its longevity. But many spiritual and religious theories have existed for centuries, even millennia, before being discarded. So longevity is in itself no proof of anything. In the past few centuries, Christianity has been undergoing a process of sorting and winnowing, and now many Christians are proud to say they don't accept ancient doctrines such as patriarchy and infallibility. We're constantly being called upon as children of God to be honest with ourselves about doctrines that create and sustain harm.

I personally believe that no religion anywhere on Planet Earth is -- or should be -- exempt from this constant process of reexamination, healing, and redemption. This is how we make the world a better place, one choice at a time. But we can't do it without Humbleness.

LSP5: Feeling Completely and Truly Well

Dr. Eben Alexander describes in his book how he knew during the early stages of his recovery that he was "completely and truly 'well' for the first time in [his] entire life" (page 123). This statement is right on the money from my point of view. Feeling your connection with God means feeling "completely and truly well."

This doesn't mean you'll never get sick. This doesn't mean you'll never die. It means you feel wholly present in your human skin and wholly accepting of the many simple truths about God and God's Creation that you've never noticed before.

People are often afraid that if they know "too much" about the mysteries of Divine Love, their sense of wonder will be diminished, and they'll be left with nothing but a bunch of facts and legal rulings, like the mundane wrappings strewn on the floor after all the Christmas presents have been opened. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. The more you open your eyes and your heart to God's mysteries, the more mysteries you stumble across in the course of your everyday life. This photo, which reminds me of the feeling of Divine Love, came to me in an unexpected way. My angelic guardians, who know me so well, suggested one day that I put my camera in the trunk of my car "just in case." I didn't get around to taking any photos that day, so I left my camera in the trunk. It turned quite cold that night, and by the time I visited the nearby conservatory the next day, my camera was so cold that the lens fogged over when as I entered the warm, moist interior of the gardens. At first I was upset. But my loving guardians pointed out that I could take some misty photos before my lens warmed up. This was clearly what they had in mind for me all along. I got some lovely mystical shots that make me smile with wonder every time I look at them, but I wouldn't have got them if I'd been purely logical about how to use my camera. Photo credit JAT 2018.

This can be a hard thing to put into words, especially if you're not 100% sure yourself exactly what you're trying to express. I can see this struggle in Dr. Alexander's book. He knows he knows it, but he still isn't 100% certain of what he's trying to say. Why isn't he sure? He isn't sure because during any near death experience, your brain gets what writers call an "info-dump" -- a vast quantity of new information that can take many years to process. I estimate that, during his 7-day coma, Dr. Alexander probably received the equivalent of a few terabytes of new data.

That's a lot of new data.

Dr. Alexander is a very bright man, and, as a soul, he's also a risk taker who's willing to plunge right into the deep end and worry later about the mechanics of swimming. So for him the right approach to finding his connection with God was to jump hard and fast into the pool, hold his breath, and take in as much information as he possibly could in one big gulp.

Most souls who are here on Planet Earth are not risk takers to this degree. There are many souls who, like myself, need to know about the mechanics of swimming before they go anywhere near the deep end. They need to understand at a logical level where they're going -- and why -- so they won't be afraid.

I've spent the past few years reverse-engineering the process of going to the Core. Like Dr. Alexander, I have a hard science background (mostly chemistry). Although I'm a practising mystic, and although I see wonder and mystery and divine love in everything around me, I also need straight, simple, scientific answers to all the big questions in life.

It's not good enough for me to say, "Well, I've been to the Core and I've talked to God the Mother and God the Father and I trust in their love." I need to know how I do this. I need to what's going on inside my brain, what's normal and completely and truly well about the physiology of my brain that makes it possible for me to do this in my everyday life. Because if I can do it as a normal human being, then it's not about "otherness" or "transcendence" but instead about "wholeness" and "healing."

This opens up a realm of possibilities for others who want to know what it feels like to be "completely and truly well."

Being open to the idea that there really is a God, and being open to the idea that God is a real person (actually, two people united in love as parents to us all) is the first step in the healing process.


For Further Reflection:

You've probably heard of the placebo effect and its role in helping us heal our physical minds and bodies. Although researchers aren't entirely certain how the placebo effect works, there's no doubt our DNA comes preloaded with a mysterious healing mechanism that can help us move towards a state of wellness.

Two psychospiritual factors are especially relevant in activating the placebo effect. One is our personal desire to get better. If we secretly want to remain sick because we're getting secondary benefits, there's not much of an incentive for the body to trigger its own healing mechanisms.

The second factor is our relationship with our caregivers, including our professionally trained physicians, nurses, and the like. There's evidence that when we trust our caregivers, and believe they're acting with genuine care and concern for us (instead of acting by rote for the sole purpose of billing our insurance companies), we're much more likely to experience the positive benefits of the placebo effect. (A 2018 experiment in Britain investigated this effect.)

There's a similar spontaneous healing effect that takes place within our bodies and brains when we turn our attention in positive ways towards a loving relationship with God. Some people call this effect "faith." Whatever you call it, there's nothing quite like the experience of opening your heart to God's immense love and feeling safe in that love.

Your biology responds to relationship with God in the same way your body responds to an empathetic caregiver. You may continue to be physically sick (because not every illness can or will be cured), but inside your Heart you find the courage to believe you're still safe in God's love, despite your pain.

Feeling "completely and truly well" is an emotional and spiritual state, not a physical or cognitive state. Once you decide the feeling of psychospiritual wholeness is worth the trouble, you and your angels will understand each other much better.

LSP3: An Angel Feast

"An angel feast." This is what I wrote at the top of page 100 in Proof of Heaven. (I'm always making notes as I read, which is why I buy books rather than borrowing them from the library or studying them in digital format.)

Dr. Alexander's story about visiting Heaven isn't just about himself. It's also about his family and friends, all of whom were changed by his unique journey. You could say, in a way, that Dr. Alexander was a pilgrim who took an unexpected trip to a land few visit during their human lifetimes. When he returned, he brought with him Divine seeds that were sort of like pilgrimage souvenirs. These seeds of knowledge and truth became freely available to others to plant within their own Hearts if they so chose.

So in Proof of Heaven, page 100 describes events that were unfolding for Dr. Alexander's family and friends. They had spent five frightening days at the hospital as they tried to care for him and each other. Everyone's nerves were frayed, and three people (first Phyllis, then Sylvia and Peggy) decided to go back to Dr. Alexander's family home for a rest. At this point, Sylvia discovered that someone had left the freezer door open in the basement, and food had started to thaw. A puddle of melt water had already formed on the floor.

This puddle on the floor was the angels' invitation to a feast.

Faced with this new problem, the three women at the house had to choose between one of two paths that constantly confront us.

The first path (the usual, heavily travelled path) is to fall into patterns of blame and shame: "Who left the freezer door open? It's all your fault! What a waste of money! We don't have time to go to the grocery store to replace all this food! This is so unfair! Why is all this happening to us? God doesn't care about us. If God cared, he wouldn't have let this happen when we're so weary and full of despair! Doesn't he know we can't take this kind of stress? Why is he letting us suffer this way? It's not fair!"

Don't try to carry the weight of the heavens on your shoulders. That's God's job! This covered cup, showing Heracles supporting the heavenly sphere, was made in about 1630--1640, probably in Germany. It's on display as part of the Kenneth Thomson collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

The second path (the less common and more poorly understood path) is to see the potential for healing: "We're all heartsick and worried. It's all right for us to feel this way. It's normal!  But the truth is, we can't do this alone. We all need each other. We need to be together. We need to look after each other. And we need to look after ourselves. There's no point pretending we're superheroes who can go for five days without a rest. Let's stop for a short rest. We'll cook the food that's already thawed, and we'll invite our family to be together, and we'll even go to the store and buy some fresh bread because we all need a good meal and a chance to recharge our batteries together! We trust God to look after Eben while we're here. This is the right thing to do!"

As we know from the book, Dr. Alexander's loved ones chose the second path.

Being in daily relationship with God means learning how to think as an angel does (that is, as a person-of-soul, a term I often use for angels). It doesn't mean acting the right way according to a traditional set of Divine Laws (orthopraxy), and it doesn't mean having right faith in a traditional set of Divine Doctrines (orthodoxy). Being in daily relationship with God means you're willing to look for the invitations from God that are all around you every day. It means you're willing to see the blessing in a puddle of water on the floor.

A puddle on the floor that brings a heartbroken family together has more meaning to God and God's angels than all the "blame and shame" words written by history's many prophets.

Here is what I've learned as I've walked the Spiral Path: When all you see around you is lemons, ask for help in seeing the hidden lemonade your angels can see (even when it seems impossible that such lemonade could exist). It's always there. Always.


For Further Reflection:

Think about all the religious and spiritual traditions you've learned about so far in your life. If you could boil down each set of teachings to its essential image of God, would you find examples of Path #1 (where difficult situations are seen as punishments from God or the Universe) or would you find examples of Path #2 (where trials and tribulations are seen as opportunities for change, growth, and learning)?

Most spiritual seekers have no idea that it's the image of God they have in their heads that has the greatest effect on the direction of their path.

The second greatest factor is the image people have in their heads of themselves (that is, how they view the essence of their own core self, which is the soul).

If you have a negative image of God and a negative image of yourself, you'll always see the worst in every situation, and you'll spend a heck of a lot of time on Path #1.

If you have a negative image of God and a positive image of yourself, or a positive image of God and a negative image of yourself, you're again going to have a heck of a time.

It's only when you have a positive image of both God and your own soul that you'll be able to learn how to find Path #2 in your life, and, more importantly, how to stay consistently on the path where lemons become lemonade.

Though you may assume that all major world religions and all popular spiritual teachings already profess a positive image of both God and the soul, you'll find after careful reflection that few of them do.

This is why so many people in so many places have had such a difficult time reconnecting with God.

They're looking for God in all the wrong places.