My initial critique of BK inspired the most comments of any entry on this blog. Some lauded the criticism, others came to defend. I thought of a couple of other problems with BK’s worldview, all my projection, of course, since according to BK there is no world out there — it’s all in our imaginations.
God is what-is: perhaps one of her most famous quotes. She says she has no concepts about the world, because all concepts are false, but this is one of her favorites, and she uses it as a teaching tool, not as an ontological statement.
Surprisingly, I bought into this one for awhile. I say surprisingly, because it’s a ridiculous concept. God is normally and meaningfully thought of as the first mover or the first cause. God is also not limited to his creation, happening as it is. God must be something other than what’s happening right now. If God were only what-is, then what moved or caused creation in the first place? And how can a creator only be the creation?
Saying that God is reality is a meaningless statement. It’s actually nothing more than a tautology aimed at making people feel relieved. “Life is life” or “reality is reality” is more to the truth of what BK means. The “God” that’s in her statement is no God at all. I suspect it alleviates people’s guilt or sense of something missing. There’s no God to whom they have to live up or account. Everything’s okay, just relax. The message feels good, which accounts for her popularity; after all, we are probably the most narcissistic, undisciplined, and impatient society that’s ever graced the planet. I should know, I’m one of its prime examples!
The second problem: her worldview contains assumptions which she hasn’t noticed and which her followers also don’t notice. I call it immediatism. I don’t think it’s a word; I just made it up. Basically, it means that the only experience possible is this immediate one we’re having now. Anything else is just thought and therefore not as true — or not true at all — as this experience now. Therefore, this now is the only truth. You find this view in Zen, Taoism, and other forms of nondual philosophy. It’s a view that tries to escape having a view. It’s an extreme form of skepticism, quite similar to solipism.
The problem with it is simple. The belief or idea that there is no world aside from this experience now is a belief. It assumes that anything not experienced doesn’t exist. It’s absurdly easy to discredit. Microwave rays don’t exist — because I don’t experience them. When I do experience them, then they do exist. Basically, all phenomena are like this. Their existence depends on this mind co-creating them. There’s no way to prove this nor is there any compelling reason whatsoever to buy into this view.
The fact that BK is living in world with nothing should give people pause. She often viewed as an enlightened being, but it might be nothing more than severe brain-damage or possession by some odd spirit, if you believe in such things. Her change was radical. For years she’s severly depressed, then one day she wakes up and she’s a different person. That’s not normal and one should consider carefully the implications of her teachings. Ideas have consequences. What consequences would occur should a large group of people stop believing that their thoughts meant anything or represented true things or events?
Just some food for thought.
Hi Joe,
Though I haven’t read this author you speak of, your analysis seems straight on, and is very interesting.
Of course you have consisdered it, but I will give voice to it: What do you think of people who begin in one tradition, and upon diverging from it, or actually departing completely, seem to still be a part of that tradition; perhaps even need its banner to keep a following?
Whenever I said “God is everything,” I know I was trying to accomplish several things;
1. I wanted to soften the blow of my suggestion that there was no God as we refer to an omnipotent creator outside the realm of the natural laws of the universe binding our lives as mortals.
2. I wanted to suggest the idea that we could celebrate existence without a god, to the extent that we would still be somewhat religious about it; almost in a ‘theological’ sense, or a religious one-with our humanity, evolution, and the earth as enough, but without saying it so bluntly as to piss off “the God People.”
3. I wanted to suggest that if there is a god, he is respoinsible for all things.
Great post Joe. SHouldn’t you be etting a PhD?
Carlo~Mando
Hello.
Good morning.
First time caller, please bear with me.
the only experience possible is this immediate one we’re having now. Anything else is just thought and therefore not as true — or not true at all — as this experience now. Therefore, this now is the only truth. You find this view in Zen, Taoism, and other forms of nondual philosophy. It’s a view that tries to escape having a view. It’s an extreme form of skepticism, quite similar to solipism.
Well, now, I was with you until those last two sentences. I respectfully disagree. In my reality, holding the door open to outcome uncertainty is more akin to possibilityland than skepticism or non-viewness. And such a schema does not equate with solipsism: I *allow* for “the other* to exist.
I am most interested in learning more about your thoughts on those last sentences as I’ve read quite a few of your entries and seem to be alignment with much of what I saw.
I leave you with the words of a poet better able to summarize what I frequently am not able to communicate:
Wanting to Get Closer
by Stephen Dunn
Oh vanity
makes everything a little lovelier.
I like those people
who feel a vagueness exists
without them, who see in themselves
a hundred possible improvements.
And the fictions! How the thing
looked at changes as it changes
the looker. Even the physicist
stands here rather than there
tipping the universe accordingly.
To speak of Narcissus is to speak
of conviction. What matter
that he saw himself
in the glassy water? For once
his aesthetic found its embodiment
and he went to meet it, dying
(I’d like to think) of amazement.
Reader, whom I must not address,
once again I’m standing
in front of a mirror.
I want to get close, then closer.
The image doesn’t interest me.
Namaste.
Hi Carl,
I’m not sure what your question was, could you rephrase it?
God is everything. Well, if one says so! And it’s common in our post-modern age to say so, but it seems like an escape, which you allude to in your reasoning. It’s comfortable and no one is there to judge me — we all like that.
But what does it mean “God is everything”?
It means nothing, of course. It’s PC atheism.
Hi Ann T Om,
“holding the door open to outcome uncertainty” is not what BK is talking about. Nothing wrong with what you’re saying. She says explicitly that our world is nothing but concepts.
“I allow for the other to exist.” Whether you allow it or not the other is there. If you decide you don’t want salesmen in your life, they’ll still appear. Or am I missing something?
Best wishes.
Hi Joe,
I too have difficulty with the idea of “God is what-is”.
Does the pair of pliers in the hand of a torturer exist? Is that God? The slow ebbing of strength in the victim of a famine? The slow accent up the stairs of an abusive step-father in the middle of the night? Is all that really God? I shudder at the thought of such a God.
Okay, I’m not experiencing these things right now, but who can honestly tell me that they don’t actually exist?
When I think of God* I think of Light and Love and Life and the possibility of somehow transforming and transcending the pain and suffering of this awful broken world.
Wishing you Peace and Happiness mate,
Marcus
Good evening.
I suppose I hit a mental snag with “the view of not having a view” and your link to solipsism and skepticism. I could “argue” the position either way but I gave up engaging in *that* kind of behavior decades ago. (laughing)
Whether you allow it or not the other is there. If you decide you don’t want salesmen in your life, they’ll still appear.
In my limited understanding, to a solipsist, the existence of the salesmen is not definitively known…and has little to do with what the solipsist wants or doesn’t want.
But hey, it’s Sunday evening and my dendrites are firing on wind-down speed.
Thanks for the follow-up note.
Great links, too. Really yum.
*
Hi Joe,
Your comment, “Basically, it means that the only experience possible is this immediate one we’re having now. Anything else is just thought and therefore not as true — or not true at all — as this experience now. Therefore, this now is the only truth”
The immediate experience we’re having now is thought, just as true or not true as anything else. We experience relative truth in the now. It is not the only truth.
Zentient
As a scholar in English Literature I just wanted to clear up that the concept that “God is Everywhere” is not at all Post-Modern.
Modernism is a movement that suggests that ultimate reality is far more complex than our structures allow us to perceive, and that we must break down structure to discover ultimate meaning.
Post Modernism encourages the same, but goes a step further to say that, once those structures are broken down, there is no meaning at all– only chaos– and consequently, one must revert back to structure to function, and just wistfully hope that some doubtful form of meaning really is out there, though they may never know for certain.
In a nut-shell, Post-Modernism is really the atheist version of Modernism. It would not encourage the idea that God is Everywhere, but rather would suggest that things just arbitrarily happen without purpose or any form of governor…
Generally the arrival of one artistic or literary movement becomes the end of another. This is not so with Modernism. In our current age, Modernism and Post Modernism are currently co-existing as conflicting ways of thought, and you can currently see a return to Modernism in much of today’s literature.
___
As for the caller,
I believe the most troubling part is that there is not “a truth” but rather there are “many truths.” Each person is going to go about life and come to a different truth and reality, right? And aren’t they all equally true and beautiful? Life is too complex to limit to “one way.”
Bests,
“Many truths” is itself a claim of “Truth”. Each person may come to a different truth, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. And I don’t think that all truths are equally beautiful. It’s easy to say until you get out into the real world and see the suffering that these truths cause.
It’s a great irony that post-modernism is as exclusive as any of the other philosophical systems but its proponents don’t see this. As I’ve written before, one must take a stand somewhere — and if you take a stand “nowhere” then it’s still a stand.
It’s a great irony that post-modernism is as exclusive as any of the other philosophical systems but its proponents don’t see this. As I’ve written before, one must take a stand somewhere — and if you take a stand “nowhere” then it’s still a stand.
I disagree jo, one need not take a stand. I guess that’s the stand I’m making-I would be wary of ever coming to any conclusions about the nature of reality, this is an unfolding journey and I feel ought to remain fluid…
funny that concept, remain fluid…
anyway, great discussion. May I be so bold as to suggest that after considering several of the BK experiencers stories’ I have come to take a stand re the woman and her work…
ho bag megalomaniac.
I am a long time practitioner of TW as well as an even longer time student of Zen (starting with Katagiri Roshi in the 80’s). The real issue with Katie-isms such as “God is Everything” is that it is of no benefit to preach beliefs of any kind as truth. Any beautiful sounding “truth” that gets bandied about oneness or love or whatever is just another stressful belief to someone for whom it isn’t simply an attempt to describe one’s present moment perception/insight. No one can know what another means by these statements unless they’re having the same experience. Further the whole idea that it’s useful to come up with these things tempts us to try to remember an insight that belong to someone else (if it was their thought) or to another moment (if it was our own thought)….
The 4 questions are not religion or philosophy. They are great tools that provide skillful means to awake from the hypnotic effect from attending to thought’s content.
When I studied with BK years ago she seemed to know that. I haven’t been around her in years and so don’t have an opinion about whether she still does…
To Carl (a very belated response):
“Though I haven’t read this author you speak of, your analysis seems straight on, and is very interesting.”
Carl, if you haven’t read the author, on what are you basing your evaluation of this analysis as “right on”? Any student of Philosophy 101 will tell you that, at best, you are analyzing second-hand information.
It’s also interesting to note that every critique that can be made of B. Katie’s teaching has been made for centuries of various forms of Buddhism, such as the “mind only” school of Theravada Buddhism. This is not a new debate! ;o)
The Buddha taught: “I teach one thing only: suffering, and the end to its reach.”
I challenge you to study the teachings of Byron Katie (who, by the way, doesn’t claim be an authority. She claims to be a person who knows “what hurts,” and “what doesn’t hurt.” Sounds like someone else I just quoted.)
In the end, a philosophical discussion is interesting, academic, and so much intellectual twiddling.
Take care,
Sharon
Sharon,
AFIK, there is no mind only school of Theravada Buddhism.
Byron Katie doesn’t claim to be an authority… well, that’s debatable. Her method is fine for ending suffering… her further-reaching conclusions step outsdie of method and into ontology. I’ve read everything that’s out there, even the unpublished material, and it’s clear that she’d fit right in with the advaita and mind-only folks. I’m not saying that’s a problem per se, just pointing out the weak epistemology.
Carl is a friend of mine, so I wouldn’t read too much into his response!