Below is my prepared text for my presentation at Open Circle on November 22, 2015. 

My presentation can be viewed on YouTube.

 

Sam Harris is a remarkable man. He was born in 1967, the son of a Hollywood couple, Berkeley Harris, a Quaker, and Susan Harris who was Jewish. Some would say that Sam Harris wasted his youth, dropping out of university and taking ecstasy and other drugs. He spent most of his twenties studying Buddhism and meditation in the United States and India and Nepal. But he did not just study, he did a lot of meditating. He went on a lot of silent retreats. Sam highly values the experiences he had as a young man, taking drugs and meditating. This was all made possible by the support of his mother.

This presentation is about two stories, the story of Sam Harris and my story.

I am an average and ordinary person, nothing remarkable. I grew up in Canada in a Dutch immigrant family, a religious family, Calvinistic Protestants. Those are my spiritual roots but as a child I mostly found going to church and studying catechism very boring. As a teenager I was sure that I knew more than my parents and I rejected their religion.

At age fifteen my life changed dramatically. I heard a voice on the radio, two voices actually, that immediately struck a chord with me. The voices were those of Garner Ted Armstrong and his father Herbert W. Armstrong. I became a regular listener of their daily broadcasts called “The World Tomorrow” and I soon subscribed to their magazine, The Plain Truth.I ordered many of the free booklets they offered on a wide variety of topics which ranged from Biblical topics to analysis of world events in light of Biblical prophecies. I thought that I had found God’s truth.

At age eighteen I joined the Worldwide Church of God, the domain of Herbert W. Armstrong, his son Garner Ted Armstrong. Looking back, I joined a cult. The public face of this cult wasthe Plain Truth magazine and its primary institution was Ambassador College. For the next twenty­five years my spiritual journey continued in this cult.

Unlike Sam, I did not waste my youth and my mother thought that I should support myself. So I became an accountant. Some would say that was a wasted youth. [Yes I do make sure that all the heads on paper money are in alignment.]

At age 30 Sam Harris decided it was time to make something of his life and went back to Stanford where he got a degree in philosophy and graduated in 2000. Soon thereafter came 9/11 which had a big impact on Sam. It had a big impact on many people. These events inspired Sam Harris to write a book, The End of Faith:Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. It was a great success and it had a good run on the New York Times bestseller list. Sam Harris became a well known public figure, one of the Four Horsemen, a group of men who reject religion and promote the respectability of atheism.

In the 1990s I made an important transition in my own spiritual journey. Herbert W, Armstrong had died and soon thereafter the church he built, the cult he built, began to fall apart. Along with many others, my wife and I left.

Looking back now on my twenty­five years in a cult, I can make some observations. It was a benign cult, not nearly as destructive as some like Jonestown or Heaven's Gate. [Heaven’s Gate gives new meaning to keeping up with the Joneses] It was quite a poor spiritual experience because it was very controlling. But for me it was a net positive experience in my life. Some like to criticize religion as something that cannot be positive, only an unnecessary burden, an unnecessary crutch. But it is better to walk with a crutch than to fall flat on your face.

Stage 1 of my spiritual journey was Calvinism as a child. Stage 2 was my 25 years in a cult at the fringe of Christianity. But at midlife I realized that my crutch was now a burden and it was time to let it go. Stage 3 of my spiritual journey was very different , a period of twenty years which I label Nothingness. I had no interest in anything religious or anything spiritual. I reexamined the big question “Does God Exist?” and I embraced agnosticism. I self­identified as a secular humanist.

[What is the difference between a cult and a religion? About a hundred years!]

But during this period of my life I did feel a void and I looked into the question “What is the meaning of life?” but I did so from a secular perspective. I was more than a little aware of my own existential angst. But mostly I concentrated on my career and preparing for retirement.

Sam Harris followed up the success of his first book with two more best sellers. At the same time he furthered his education and earned a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA. He firmly established himself as a science writer, a public intellectual and an unapologetic atheist.

And then... and then in 2014 he released a book that caused a stir, a book written with the intention of being provocative. The very title of the book is provocative to some in the secular community ­ Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. The book was well received by some and openly opposed by others. Some atheists publically pointed out to Sam that they did not need to be told to wake up, they were already awake. But I agree with Sam...

“Scientists generally start with an impoverished view of spiritual experience...” “Spirituality remains the great hole in secularism, humanism, rationalism, atheism...” 

In 2012 my wife and I retired in Lakeside. Like many newcomers to this area, I began to explore activities to occupy my time. I joined a small local organization called the Lakeside Freethinkers.

I noticed that angst does not simply go away during these golden years of retirement. There still is this little void inside me. Last year someone said something at a Lakeside Freethinker meeting that caught my attention. He talked about his interest in secular Buddhism. About the same time Sam’s new book was generating considerable pre­publication interest. I bought the kindle edition and eagerly awaited its release. This is marvelous technology. Buy a book and on the release date, there it is on your tablet computer!

Last year marks the beginning of stage 4 of my spiritual journey, which I refer to as secular spirituality because I am looking more broadly than just at secular Buddhism. I have no idea where this journey will take me. It may go nowhere or it may take me to Enlightenment, whatever that is. I just don’t know. But at the same time I know that I strongly desire to go down this path to discover where it will take me. This approach can be described as growing by casting yourself adrift.

Let’s look at some of the ideas in Sam Harris’s book.

Harris has been attacked by some religious people who claim that spirituality is a religious experience. He has also been attacked by some atheists who claim that spirituality is nonexistent. There is not, and there cannot be, anything other than the material universe, say some. Harris counters these attacks from both sides quite nicely in his book.

Of course spirituality is a concept that has no precise meaning. According to Sam spirituality is

“ ... the efforts people make, through meditation, psychedelics, or other means, to fully bring their minds into the present or to induce nonordinary states of consciousness.” 

Sam Harris has an interesting attitude towards psychedelic drugs. Remember, he is a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience. He knows a lot about the brain. Yet he highly values his youthful experiences with psychedelic drugs. He has two daughters and hopes they will try psychedelic drugs, but in a safe settings of course.

What is secular spirituality for me? That is something that I have just begun to work on. But I will share a few of my ideas.

Although I am learning a lot from Sam Harris, most likely neither psychedelic drugs and seeking an altered state of consciousness will be part of my secular spirituality.

Spirituality is of the spirit but that word is problematic because of its religious connotations and its ghost in a machine orientation. It often triggers an us versus them reaction. So let’s set that aside and come at this in secular terms.

Scientists do not know how the human brain generates the human mind. Some assert that the mind is reducible to brain function, but this is still unproven. Water is reducible to oxygen and hydrogen but when so reduced the water is gone. Perhaps our minds are like water. It may be that the mind emerges from the brain but cannot be reduced to basic brain function. Therefore a distinction between the physical and the mental is meaningful. We could say that mentalism and spiritualism in a certain sense are similar. But the term mentalism is even more problematic than the term spiritualism. But whatever spirituality is, it is something that takes place in the mind. There seems to be some kind of reality beyond the physical. I am not talking about God.

However mindfulness meditation will be part of my secular spirituality. It seems that science is now catching up to what the Buddhist monks discovered through experience 2500 years ago. Mindfulness meditation is good for our wellbeing and enhancing my wellbeing is a worthwhile goal. There are now lots of science supporting meditation. But I want to learn more and I want to learn it through my personal experience.

Something I appreciate about Sam Harris is that he highly values subjective experience, perhaps a bit rare in the scientific community which favors objective reality. However,

we experience reality in our minds. As we journey through life physically, we experience that journey in our minds. In that sense, our lives are a spiritual journey, in our heads.

Another aspect of spirituality, for me, is connection with mystery, the mystery of consciousness, the mystery of the self. the mystery of how the universe began. There are many mysteries. Science may solve some of these mysteries but until they do I hope to explore them through the concept of spirituality.

Spirituality is also a vehicle for growth, for change, for self­help. It is about the pursuit of empathy and compassion. Spirituality can also be about seeking wisdom, ancient wisdom and modern wisdom. Philosophy is one path to wisdom. Perhaps spirituality is a different path to the same destination. Perhaps the Dalai Lama is truly wise. Who else today is wise and how can we know?

Spirituality is also a means of connection with others. There is a growing worldwide community of spiritual seekers. This may emerge as a significant force that will may help solve some very serious problems like climate change.

Where will Sam’s journey take him in the next twenty years? It will be interesting to watch. Recently, he was a speaker at the world’s first mindfulness summit, a place where most atheists would not be part of. But I think I would have loved it. Of course, there is a commercial aspect to this. For $149 you can buy a full access pass.

The Summit had 31 speakers, one for each day in October. The comments about Sam’s session were very polarized. Some loved it and some hated it. Sam is a polarizing person, not something I admire. He has a certain approach but there are many approaches, many teachers. But for me he was a place to start, only a beginning, my beginning. Of the 31 speakers, there are five whose names I recognize ­ Dan Harris, Joseph Goldstein, Arianna Huffington, Dan Goleman and Jon Kabat­Zinn. There are many, many potential teachers. There are many, many potential paths.

In my remaining time I would like to talk a little bit about worldviews. By worldview I mean the comprehensive set of beliefs through which we see the world. At one time I had a religious worldview, a Christian worldview. Now I have a secular worldview. I am quite comfortable with my secular outlook. I am exploring a spiritual worldview with the intention of understanding it better, not with the intention of abandoning my secular views. I will take from a spiritual worldview only that which makes sense to me and that which will help me.

I very much believe in the value of building bridges between people with mutually exclusive worldviews. Some of my best friends are Christians. Some of my new friends at Lakeside are secular humanists and atheists. There are probably people here at Open Circle committed to a spiritual worldview. I have noticed that that worldview often does very well with avoiding the unnecessary us versus them tension between opposing points of view.

I would like to close with a couple of quotes. Sam Harris...

“ The paradox is that we can become wiser and more compassionate and live more fulfilling lives by refusing to be who we have tended to be in the past. But we must also relax, accepting things as they are in the present, as we strive to change ourselves. ”

And a simpler one from Pope Francis...

“ Life is a journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.”